Recipe Review: Good Eats Chocolate Pudding

I don't know about you, but I really like chocolate.

So do the munchkin and husband.

The munchkin has been asking for chocolate pudding every time we're in the dairy aisle at Wegmans. While it's great to have it as a treat every once in a while, I'm not too keen on spending money on things I can make at home.

And, thanks to the Good Eats episode "Puddin' Head Blues," I've already got a couple of pudding recipes in my back pocket.

Including one for chocolate pudding.

Recipe Review

Shopping List

• Instant, nonfat, powdered milk
• heavy cream
• whole milk

Everything else was in my pantry.

Ease of preparation

The mix bit was quite easy, though I did neglect to add the powdered milk. (Oops!)

This is a stovetop-cooked pudding, so I'm rating the recipe as "medium" overall.

Even so, my sister could do this if someone watched her kids.

Specialty Equipment Required?

Yes. AB gives the dry ingredient measures in ounces, which means he'd rather you added them by weight and not by volume. 

I have a kitchen scale; I bought it for $15 several years ago. It's great for things like this.

He also calls for the cooked pudding to be run through a strainer to remove any stray lumps from the starch's gelatinization. This is a worthwhile, though messy, step!

Regular rotation-worthy?

Rather a big hit, I thought, so, yes.

RECIPE WIN. 

Bonus Recipe - Rice Pudding

Now, I know what you're going to say, because I, like you, also despised rice pudding as either too sweet or having a weird texture - who wants to chew "pudding" ?

So, after catching a repeat of the GE episode "Puddin' Head Blues" on TV the other day, AB's recipe for Indian Rice Pudding started to call to me.

How fortunate (while the recipe was calling) for us to order takeout Chinese? 

Quite.

Having the main ingredient (1 cup of cooked-and-cooled long-grain or Basmati rice) in the fridge, albeit a bit older than I probably ought to have used, meant I needed to create a shopping list - it calls for whole milk, heavy cream, and coconut milk, none of which I had on-hand, as well as pistachios, golden raisins, and cardamom.

So, here's the compacted version of a week's worth of posts:

Shopping List

• whole milk (I bought a half-gallon, because my daughter and I will drink it, but a small "single serve" bottle from your local convenience store would be fine)
• heavy cream 
• canned coconut milk (I used "light" from TJ)
• ground cardamom
• UNSALTED pistachios
• golden raisins

Recipe Review

The recipe worked as expected (near perfectly - I'm fortunate to never have had an AB recipe fail) though it is a little involved. Anything where you're bringing milk to a boil is going to be involved, in my opinion, so it's not necessarily a bad thing.

Mr. Brown's meticulous step-by-step instructions really break everything down so I'd expect that my sister could follow them, but she likely wouldn't - she's kind of a picky eater.

I've never cooked with cardamom before, though I've eaten dishes that feature it, and I think it might be my new favorite spice. It smells kind of lemony, with a hint of pepper, and tastes like real vanilla with a hint of nutmeg. 

My husband enjoyed the flavor, but the texture from the rice, which had been in the fridge for 5 days, was a bit off-putting - it was still a bit "crunchy" and it shouldn't have been.

My daughter, on the other hand, wouldn't even try it. Whatever; she's 4.

Conclusion

Despite the kid turning up her nose at it, I'm still going to add this to the regular rotation, with the caveat that it needs to be made within one day of having takeout.

It's also not too complicated to do on a weeknight if everything's already in the house. Now that I've got the spice, nuts, and raisins, I'll only have to get the milk & cream next time.

RECIPE WIN.

Glossary of Liz-Terms (Part 1)

Why should you need a quicklist of terms I use? If you're going to follow this blog, you'll need to know how I short-hand a few people, ingredients, grocery stores, or random things.

Chances are good, I'll need more than one of these over the course of the blog, so this is "Part 1."

• AB - Alton Brown, whose show Good Eats is part of the reason I'm half the cook I am today. 
• AP - all-purpose, as in "all-purpose flour" 
• FN - Food Network
• Giada-chicken parm - Giada DiLaurentiis's recipe for chicken parmesan, which is a weeknight staple in our house (even if I cheat and use jarred sauce; sorry Giada)
• GE - Good Eats
• Mr. Brown see AB
• Weggies - Wegmans (a Rochester, NY-based local chain of supermarkets; if you think it's insane to rave about a grocery store, you've never been to Wegmans)

Still with me? Good.