Pierre Herme’s chocolate rice pudding

This was an after work dessert whipped up by Mel in my tiny kitchen last night. It was pretty easy, involving some stirring over the stove than poured into cups and chilled. We skipped the raisins, somehow raisins and chocolate don’t go well in my book. Pierre Herme suggests serving this with caramelized rice crispies. We had it with crushed butter curl biscuits from Marks and Spencers. We had a carbo laden dinner with bread and delicious broccoli and leek soup by Yati for starters, then pasta and lastly rice for dessert! I’ve started to think of soup recipes for dinner now since they make such a complete meal.

 

Dinner was great and thanks Hanani for the lovely rectangular glass dish. I love Pyrex! Every dish I receive inspires me to try something new and I think this would be a great dish to make this recipe for custard baklava in.

Chocolate rice pudding
Source: Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Hermé
Serves 6

950 ml whole/full-fat milk
100 grams arborio rice
2.5 Tbsp sugar
a pinch of salt
2 Tbsp unsalted butter, at room temperature
200 grams bittersweet chocolate, melted
125 ml/60 grams plump golden raisins

Pour the milk into a heavy-bottomed saucepan, add the rice, sugar and salt. Bring to the boil, stirring frequently (NB! the milk boils over very quickly, so pay attention!). When boiling, reduce the temperature and simmer slowly for about 15 minutes, until the rice is cooked through, but still al dente.
Remove the saucepan from the heat and stir in the butter. When the butter is melted, fold in the melted chocolate, stirring gently. Finally stir in the raisins.
Pour the chocolate rice pudding into individual serving glasses. Cover the glasses with clingfilm, cool to room temperature and then chill until ready to serve.

It was waayyy too hot to take photos of these in my balcony so these were taken in the cool comfort of my airconditioned bay window. The lighting wasn’t great hence the cool blues and greenish hues, not the best of photos but it was sooo hot we had to hole up in our airconditioned bedroom. I had two little cups left over from the dinner last night so H and I had a little cold afternoon chocolate treat while I blogged and he watched tv. The texture of these puddings were good overnight, softly set, deliciously cool, morsels of rice and the crunch of cookies on top was a rich and delicious combination. Its best served in small amounts so these tiny glass cups were ideal. Mel and I poured the hot pudding into a jug with a spout and poured it into the glasses. These made neat cups and spared us the pain of spooning small amounts into these tiny cups.

 

I bought the Arborio rice from Culina after searching high and low at numerous Cold Storage stores. I remember they used to sell Barilla risotto rice quite commonly in stores but for some reason it disappeared off the shelves for a really long time. I couldn’t find it for many months. I bought the rice for S$3.20 for a 250g pack which was pretty reasonable. I find Culina terribly overpriced and you can find many items, some a dollar or more cheaper at Tierney’s or other gourmet shops.