Not quite pudding

One of the major (MAJOR) differences between Emily and me is our patience levels. I need to be changing or disturbing things, coming or going, or messing around with things. Em, on the other hand, is quite happy to just sit with a rice pudding and let it become.

Over the weekend we made rice pudding from a semi-recipe we found at Rosy Little Things ("that's a recipe," said Em, "all of it?". It went smoothly with white rice and cardamom that she ground herself in a tiny mortar and pestle (and the only question would be: why don't *you* own one?), and it was good. And lo, we said, we shall make this again with the remaining half-a-can o'condensed milk. And so the rice was soaked, and the ingredients were joined and ne'er did I poke my head in the kitchen to see what was happening. And maybe an hour of quiet simmering later, we determined that into this short grain white rice recipe, there was long grain brown.

Emily had patiently followed the directions, had sat stirring over a vat of...well, can pudding be crunchy? The rice was not cooked, the pudding did not pud. We tried to eat it, much as we had loved the first batch, but it was not to be. Nevertheless we maintain hope, and plans for more - because you cannot, cannot have too much rice pudding.

The magic of Emily, though, is that I believe she convinced the sugar to caramelize. I kind of want to get more cans of condensed milk and see if she secretly knows how to make dulce de leche - I don't think she'll want to as she sometimes objects to snooty (french-named) foods on principle, but I can always tell her it's for more pudding (and then point out that she's been eating bastard-ish kheer).