Pudding Made From Chinese Leftovers?

Ever wonder what to do with that extra carton of rice you always get from the Chinese takeout place?  You hate just throwing in the trash, so you decide you’ll use it for dinner sometime this week.  Ten days later you realize it’s still in the fridge and end up throwing it in the garbage anyway.  Well, no more.  This rice pudding is so easy and so delicious, you’ll be thrilled to have leftover rice anytime. 

Here’s what you’ll need:

2 cups cooked rice
2 ½ cups vanilla coconut milk
¼ cup sugar
½ teaspoon cinnamon
Pinch of nutmeg
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 Tablespoon cornstarch
1 egg
2 Tablespoons butter

Ok, so mostly just ignore my ingredients picture.  I missed a few things… egg, cinnamon, etc.  I’m sure you know what those look like, though.  Recently, I discovered So Delicious coconut milk.  Well, coconut milk beverage it says on the carton.  I don’t know what the difference is from the stuff in the can, exactly, but I like the So Delicious vanilla flavor to put on my oatmeal in the mornings.  It’s seriously yum, so I thought, why not use it for my pudding.  Now, if you don’t want to go out and buy some, go ahead and substitute regular milk and add an extra 2 Tablespoons of sugar.  And speaking of sugar… you can see that I am also using coconut palm sugar.  Don’t worry about that.  I just bought it recently and wanted to try it out, regular granulated sugar or even brown sugar will be totally fine. 

So now that that’s out of the way, let’s get started.  In a medium saucepan, pour 2 cups of the milk and stir in the cooked rice, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. 

In a separate dish, whisk together 1 Tablespoon of cornstarch and ¼ cup of the remaining cold milk. 

Bring the rice mixture to a low boil and cook, stirring constantly for 5 – 7 minutes.  Much of the liquid will have cooked off and the mixture will look something like this.

 

Stir in the cornstarch slurry. 

Once the pudding reaches a boil again, it will be nice and thick and creamy. 

Go ahead and turn the heat to low.  In another dish whisk together 1 egg, the remaining ¼ cup milk, and 2 teaspoons vanilla. 

When adding eggs to something hot, you need to bring them up to temperature slowly.  This process is called tempering.  To do that, simply add a bit of the hot pudding to the egg mixture and whisk it in.  I added a total of about a cup of the pudding, in three additions. 

Pour the now hot egg mixture into the pudding and stir everything together.  The residual heat from your pudding will cook the egg, so go ahead and turn off the heat. 

Now for the final touch.  Stir in 2 Tablespoons of butter. 

You have just reached rice pudding heaven.  If you like your rice pudding cold, like I do, make sure you press a piece of plastic wrap directly on top of it so that it doesn’t form a skin, and then go ahead and refrigerate it. 

I think most people tend to like rice pudding warm, though, so just garnish it with a few nuts and/or raisins.  Personally I think raisins are the devil.

What’s your favorite kind of pudding? 

the morning after

Migas is apparently one hell of a hang over food. It's quite handy too that it's made from a bunch of leftovers.

It apparently originated in Austin, Texas, but has spread to the surrounding area. And it's so fabulous a meal that I've decided to spread it even further. And while it is a handy morning after breakfast, it's also good to have for dinner before the drinks begin.

Migas typically starts with day-old tortillas, chopped and fried in oil, but if you don't have fresh tortillas, or if you're really not in the mood to deal with the extra step, tortilla chips (particularly the broken up ones in the bottom of the bag) will work just fine. Just as leftover pico de gallo will work in place of spending time chopping onions and jalapenos first thing in the morning.

Holy hell, I am lazy.

Sometimes I even surprise myself.

Migas

What You Need

• 2-3 fresh corn tortillas
• 2 tbsp peanut oil (or some other oil with a high smoke point)

OR

• 1/2 c broken pieces of tortilla chips

-

• 1/2 jalapeno
• 1/4 onion
• 1/2 tomato
• cilantro

OR

• about 1/2 c of pico de gallo

-

• 4 eggs
• 1/4 c milk or cream
• bacon, ham or sausage
• 1/2 c cheddar or monteray jack cheese
• more cilantro if you have it

What you Gotta Do

If you're feeling up to the extra step, and have fresh tortillas handy, chop them into pieces. Shape isn't that big a deal, but they should be relatively small. Bite sized. 

In a shallow pan over medium high, heat the oil until is starts to shimmer, then sprinkle in the tortillas. Fry them until they're golden then fish them out of the oil and set them on some paper towels while you do more stuff.

If you're using fresh veggies, now's the time to chop them. Diced fairly small. If you've got pico de gallo (or salsa, in a pinch) leftover from last night's festiviites, you can hold onto it for now.

Drain most of the oil from the pan. Or, drain it all and replace it with bacon fat.

If you're using fresh veggies, you're going to want to sautee them in the fat for a bit. Just enough to take the crunch off.

While those are cooking crack the eggs into a bowl and add the milk or cream.

Beat them together until they're starting to get a little foamy. Or, until you decide you're too tired to keep beating them, which ever comes first. Depends on how hungover lazy you are.

Pour the eggs into the pan with the veggies. If you don't already have veggies in the pan, add them now.

The reason you don't have to pre cook the pico: pico de gallo uses a combination of lime juice (acid) and salt to break down the cell walls of the veggies. This is a similar process to what cooking does. Same thing happens in ceviche, which I do not recommend for breakfast while hung over.

Add the meat now too. I had ham, but whatever your fave breakfast meat is will work.

Stir this all around until the egg is mostly set.

Sprinkle on the tortillas.

And then the cheese.

Turn the heat off and cover the pan so the cheese will melt.

While the cheese is melting, warm up the rest of the tortillas (I layer mine with damp paper towels and nuke em for a few seconds), and mash the leftover beans. This step is of course optional, but a pretty typical way to serve migas.

Yes, I had tortillas, and yes I still used the chips. I did say "if you're really not in the mood to deal with the extra step." I wasn't in the mood. Well...

Serve your migas with warmed tortiallas and beans, and some seriously strong coffee.

What's your favourite morning after food?