Old School Rice Pudding

For Christmas, my mum gave me a really old cookery book called The Edinburgh Book of Plain Cookery Recipes which is an incredibly cool book published in 1932, and the official book for the Edinburgh School of Cookery and Domestic Economy, which is where her mum studied back in the day! This book contains recipes for literally everything you could ever need, from tea, to sponge cake to rabbit soup, and I've decided to give a few of these recipes a go.

As many of you may know, my search for the perfect rice pudding has been a long and arduous one, with varying degrees of success, so of course the first recipe I decided to try from this book was going to be rice pudding. It turns out that the recipe is not that different from the one my mum used to make my brother and me rice pudding when we were younger. It seems like a ludicrously long time to cook rice pudding for, and the skin on top can seem a tad off putting, but it's totally normal. I personally don't like the skin on top, but lots of people do, so eat it with your rice pudding if you want to, or push it to one side if you don't! Here is the recipe that I was working from:

Working from a very old recipe such as this one has it's difficulties, as I was beginning to realise. Firstly, I had no idea what Carolina rice was, and I didn't know what on earth a 'moderate oven' was. A bit of research told me that Carolina rice was simply a type of long grain rice, and that a moderate oven was approximately 180c. Also, as I don't like nutmeg, I decided to replace it with cinnamon.

Old School Rice Pudding (Serves 1-2)

Bare Necessities:
1 1/2ouces/45g/3tbsp Long Grain Rice
1pint/2cups/500ml Milk
1tbsp Sugar
1-2pinches Cinnamon

1. Preheat the oven to 180c/350F/Gas Mark 4
2. Grease a dish.
3. Wash the rice, and put in the dish, along with the sugar and the cinnamon.
4. Pour in the milk and give it a little stir.
5. Pop in the oven for 2 hours.
6. Once cooked, serve up with a dollop of jam on top and enjoy!

Egg Fried Rice

I don't know what it is about this dish that makes it so good, but since I can remember, whenever my family went to a Chinese restaurant or got a Chinese takeaway, I would always insist upon getting it. I have no particular reason for cooking this, nor do I have any breaking news to tell you, so I think this week I'll get straight to the recipe. Enjoy!

NB: I made quite a simple version in this and there are some add-ins I want to do, so I may make this again in the near (or not so near, I don't really know) future. In the mean-time, feel free to experiment with it and tell me how it goes!

Egg Fried Rice.

Bare Necessities:

1/2 cup Uncooked Basmati Rice (per person)
1-3 Eggs (depending on the size, your preference and also how many people you are cooking for)
a dash Soy Sauce
1/8-1/4 teaspoon Paprika
1 clove Garlic

1. Cook the rice. The amount of water needed and the cooking time will vary depending on many things, so just check the back of the packet first.

2. Beat the eggs.

3. Fry the rice in oil with the garlic and some salt and pepper if you wish. If it isn't making those sizzling sounds after a few minutes, add a dash more oil and turn up the heat. Remember to keep moving the rice around so that it doesn't burn!

4. Clear a space in the frying pan and scramble the eggs

5. Mix the scrambled eggs into the rice.

6. Add soy sauce to taste and serve warm.

Rice Pudding

You mention rice pudding to most British people and they immediately think of that chunderous gloopy stuff served at those old fashioned boarding schools, and, though I do go to a boarding school myself, we rarely get served rice pudding, and when do, though it's certainly not 'spiffing', it is almost decent. Unlike many dishes and foods I've never had phases of wanting or not wanting, liking or not liking rice pudding, I've just always loved it, haven't even been put off it by school (which is a miracle). I've always wanted to know how to cook rice pudding, and so, when I found this recipe, I just knew that I had to make it. It wasn't until I was actually making it that I realised that the instructions weren't that good, so I kind of made it up and it turned out really well! So I present to you, (mostly) my own recipe for a really quick rice pudding! I haven't made this enough to know how flexible it is, but feel free to put less cinnamon in, or exchange it for any other spices you fancy.


Rice pudding:

Bare necessities:
3/4 cups uncooked pudding rice
2.5 cups/625 ml water
8 fl oz/1cup/250 ml evaporated milk
1/2 cup sugar
1tsp cinnamon (I really like cinnamon so this was right for me, but if you're not so keen, add less)


1. Cook the rice for about 13 mins in the water or until the rice is and all the water is absorbed
2. Add the milk, sugar and cinnamon and stir.
3. Bring to the boil and then turn heat off and leave to cool