Monday, March 5, 2012

Coconut sticky rice with mango, page 38

My two kiddos have an aversion to all things pudding. Chocolate pudding, custard, jello, bread pudding-they all initiate the gag reflex in them.  So, mistake number one with me serving coconut sticky rice was calling it rice pudding. Woops. Luckily, my English cousin-in-law had just been telling the boys the week before that all English desserts are referred to as pudding. Apparently to offer dessert in England, a person gently asks, “Would you like pudding?” –which is how my son Henry got by with officially asking his cousins and brother if they would like dessert without having to share. He politely asked the kids if they would like “pudding”. They, of course, thought he was speaking in a literal American sense and whole heartily refused. And, Henry was free to lunge at the brownies all by himself. Way to use another culture’s norms to your advantage, Henry, you sneak!

So, in mirroring sneaky fashion, I backtracked on calling the coconut sticky rice rice pudding by saying I meant pudding in the English dessert way, not the American wet, sweet blob way.

It helped that the kids love mangos and hadn’t had them for some months. So, a little wet rice under a cup of mango was easy to tolerate.

I thought the coconut milk, brown sugar, short grain rice dish quite tasty and happily/surprisingly so did the kids. I think we all had seconds.

What is the wild ingredient, you ask? This recipe in the book has NO wild ingredients. There are a few such recipes in the book, ones that Bernadette thinks would be a good compliment to other wild recipes, or perhaps just such good recipes that she wanted let people know about them while she had the chance.

I’m glad she did.

No comments: