Sunday, November 16, 2014

Arroz Con Leche - Mexican Rice Pudding

I am Posting this recipe simply because I need to have this recipe in my life. My children need to have this recipe in their lives, my nieces and nephews need this recipe in their lives...for this is our childhood. A dish my mom would make when we were sick, sad, cold or just because she wanted to show us how much she loved us. Today mom is sick with the flu. Nothing sounds good to her...nothing! Well she's not starving on my watch! I set to making some Arroz con Leche (Rice with Milk) for her and I need to post it so I always have this recipe.

Mom is sitting over there in her chair at the kitchen table telling me step by step how to make this. First, fill the pot with water. This pot probably holds about 8 to 10 cups of water. Place it on the stove and wait for it to boil. *COMPLETE RECIPE BELOW*


Once it is boiling, add 1 1/2 cups of white rice. Mom uses Mahatma rice, but any rice you use is ok, but don't use the instant Uncle Ben rice or anything like that.


Then you add one can of Carnation Evaporated Milk...very important...please SHAKE THE CAN! Mom made it abundantly clear that all the good stuff has settled to the bottom, (by good stuff she probably means carbs!) so SHAKE YOUR CAN MAN!


Now add 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, you can add more later to taste but I found that 1 teaspoon was more than enough, and I love cinnamon!


Add 1 cup of sugar, again you can add more to taste later but C'MON!!! One whole cup of sugar? Yikes! You know this stuff is gonna be good!


Then you give it a gentle stir because you didn't use a big enough pot and you don't want to make a big mess! You stir making sure you get all that cinnamon dissolved in there. Is this a beautiful picture? Minus that alien looking thumb with the thumbnail stained from peeling pomegranates!


Once it comes to a boil, and watch it carefully as it will over-boil in a second, turn down the heat and continue stirring every once in a while just to make sure that you get everything mixed in well. I would say it took about 20 to 30 minutes for it to be cooked to mom's satisfaction! See...needed bigger pot.


Check this out! Not quite done yet, but getting there. You can't imagine how wonderful and homey my house smells right now! See those little flecks of cinnamon? So pretty. You can taste it at this point and adjust the sweetness by adding more sugar and/or cinnamon. Also take a bite of the rice to see if the rice is soft enough for you. Mine wasn't...yet!


If it's not quite done, just keep stirring, just keep stirring and then you can even wonder in amazement about people from my mom's generation. That generation that let nothing go to waste. See what I found in one of my kitchen drawers? Do you know what this is? This is all the twisty-ties from bags of bread, bagels, tortillas. My mom has saved them and tied them together so she has them available to tie up a bag of rice or whatever. She's amazing! That was a wonderful, caring, thrifty generation!

Reminds me of a colorful Grasshopper!
So still stirring every once in a while, just bubbling gently. I'm making sure not to let it over flow, look at all that beautiful scented steam rising from the pot! Mmmmmmm, can't wait! Just so you know, I didn't eat any of this. There are two million carbs in this! I did taste a spoonful and felt my waist expand an inch! *sigh*


It's 57 degrees outside, and I know the sun is shining in through my kitchen window, but it's still cold to us Arizona folk transplanted here in sunny Southern California so this warm bowl of loveliness just warms the cockles of our heart and the rest of our body too!

My Kitchen with the sun shining through the window
And Voila! The finished product. So creamy and sweet with that lovely cinnamon taste. It just makes everything feel right. Mom ate about a cup of this, which is fabulous for her! So make this for someone you love on a cold, dreary day, or on a cold, sunny day, or any day, you will be glad you did!







 

10 comments:

  1. My husband would probably like this, but I am not a fan of rice puddings. It is a textural thing for me. So I can't tell him about this, but I bet if I could get over the texture, I would like it. I can imagine the cinnamon scent.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I feel that way about some foods too, mushrooms for instance. Maybe you could make it for him and you could just drink the liquid, that way you get the flavor but you don't actually have to chew the rice, just try using 2 cans of the evaporated milk.

      Delete
  2. My wife loves rice pudding, me not so much. I have given up sweets, so I wouldn't eat it either, but even before, I never ate the stuff...she loved it and to me it was so-so. I felt guilty eating it. Same for chestnuts. She loves the things, and to me its like eating lima beans. I really love lima beans as a meal, but to eat them as a snack?

    You have a very inviting homey looking kitchen.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I love rice, like this or pork fried rice or Mexican rice, or plain white sticky white rice, but I pick and choose which carbs I will eat now and rice didn't make the cut! But back in the day, I loved this stuff! I've never had a chestnut, good to know they taste like lima beans because I don't like those at all! Yuk!

      Thank you. I do love my kitchen, especially when it's clean!

      Delete
    2. Chestnuts do not taste like lima beans, I just like them the same amount. The best I can describe is a soft buttery pecan like flavor. Alas chestnuts taste like chestnuts. As an ingredient in stuffing they are super, but to eat them like a snack? My wife's family scoffs them down like they were chocolate truffles...I fail to see what the big whoop is, and won't touch them despite their exhortations. If they love them so much, why should I deprive them, when I just like them and would like a little stuffing and gravy to go with them.

      Buttered lima beans with buttered parsley boiled potatoes? Died and went to heaven! Why I love that, I have no idea but wow is it good. Carb city though. I love carbs and it shows.

      Delete
    3. But Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire...isn't that like one of the most popular Christmas songs ever? Of course there's a song about figgy pudding as well and I can't imagine that would be any good!

      Aren't Carbs delicious! There's a warped sense of humor in a God that would take a delicious Avocado and make the seed so big it takes up most of the room inside and then would take the best taking things on the planet and make them full of carbs...go figure!

      Delete
    4. God's jokes on humanity are endless...for instance: let's take a four wheel drive design (spine, hips, and knees) and make it two wheel drive, but not beef up key components sufficiently, and let them live a long and arthritic life. Let's give them a big head but an only slightly larger pelvis. Let's make the young helpless for 4 years, next to helpless for 6 more, and then unleash adolescence on the adults to show them the folly of sexual attraction. Let's make them get addicted to sugar, salt, carbs, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, and all the rest of that crap.

      Let's give them Blogger and a mouse and make it that every time they click some place to fix an error in the comment with the mouse, the screen flies to the top of the blog, and the comment gets highlighted so that if you bump the delete key your comment is gone. On and on it goes.

      On the Blogger commenting has anyone else noticed the above problem? Is it Blogger or my latest lovely Apple operating system upgrade to OS X Yosemite? The more they improve things the worse it gets. But fear not the tendency to type a yen sign for a y about 10% of the time is still there.

      Delete
    5. Lol! Love it! That is a great comment. I might have to get you a ribbon for Comment of the year! :)

      I'm ok with blogger commenting so far.

      Delete
  3. The pictures are awsome, and I'm sure your arrroz con leche tastes terrific. I like rice and milk too, but mine is a simplified version. I'll throw in some raisins, but no sugar and no cinnamon.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Raisins would be delicious in this. I myself thing that is way too much sugar, but as mom was sitting there watching my every move and I was making it for her I made it her way.

      Delete

Please leave a comment.I would love to know your thoughts!