Arroz con Leche

*I'm not sure why, but I changed up my About Me, if you're interested!*

Perhaps I shall call this blog "Kristin's Adventures in the World of Rice Pudding"?

I keep finding ways to make my new favorite comfort food easier.  It's an addiction.

Simply put:  Arroz con Leche = Rice with Milk

I made a big batch and snacked my way through the week.  I used jasmine rice, vanilla, cinnamon, and a variety of milks.  To heat up leftovers, I spooned some into a bowl and drizzled with almond milk and honey before microwaving for a minute or two.

Actually, I didn't know how much it would make.  This made A LOT.

The secret to arroz con leche, as opposed to regular rice pudding, is in the milk.  Do not just use skim.  You're not putting sugar in this, so you need to use milk that has some substance to it.  I used 2 1/2 cups of 2%, 1 cup of almond, and 1/2 cup of skim.  The skim was really just to make up the difference because I was out of 2%.  The almond milk gave it flavor.  You could substitute regular milk and just add a bit of sugar and/or almond extract if you want.  The possibilities are endless!

Arroz con Leche

3 cups of milk

1 cup almond milk

2 t. vanilla

1 t. cinnamon

1 1/2 cups dry jasmine rice

3 T. honey

Bring the milks to a boil in a large soup pot.  (once again, it boiled over.  will i never learn...)

Add the vanilla, cinnamon, and rice.  Cover and simmer for 20-30 minutes until the rice is cooked and the milk is absorbed.  Stir in the honey.  Add additional honey before serving if desired.  

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Savory Sunday@The Sweet Details

Jam Hands Recipe Sharing Monday

Simple Slow-Cooked Rice Pudding

This is easy rice pudding.  Once the rice was cooked, it took me 2 1/2 minutes to put together and less than 2 hours to cook to perfection in the slow-cooker.  While it was cooking, I could go about my business.  I like low-maintenance. 

Do you know what's not easy and low-maintenance?  The Army.  They can't just have a formal ball for soldiers and wives.  They have to make it a masquerade ball.  I'm looking forward to paying not only $50 for a ticket in, but searching all of Anchorage for a mask and then carrying it around all night.

Said ball is on a school night.

The Army also decided that a simple night out on the town wasn't festive enough.  Someone thought it would be fun to require adult Army officers to dress up in superhero costumes.  And it wasn't Halloween. 

I was disappointed that I wasn't allowed to go.  After all, I went all-out for my classroom Halloween party last year.  After much deliberation, I wore a sparkly  cowboy hat. 

Don't worry though!  Childcare has been arranged for the ball!  Oh.  Wait, I don't have kids so I can't make use of the one free service that the Army does provide.  Huh. 

Anyway, now that I got all of that off of my chest*, we can move on to something that is more pleasant than thinking about the Army.  Rice Pudding.  Easy rice pudding that you don't even have to stir.

Enjoy!


Simple Slow-Cooked Rice Pudding
adapted from Fix-It and Forget-It Lightly

2 1/2 cups cooked white rice
1-12oz. can of evaporated milk
1 cup skim milk
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 t. cinnamon
1 egg, beaten
2 t. vanilla

Spray the stoneware with non-stick spray.  Combine everything in a 4-quart slow-cooker.  Mix until incorporated.

Cook on high for 1 1/2 hours or low for 3 hours.  I did 1 hour on high and 1 hour on low.


...then I promptly ate 2 platefuls, packaged it up, and sent the rest on the bear-hunting trip.  No need to eat a crockpot full of rice pudding.  Which is exactly what would've happened.

*I'm very sorry if I give off a vibe that says "i like to complain".  My goal when first starting this blog over a year ago was to make others aware of what life in the military is actually like.  Being an Army wife means these are the little complications that I deal with day in and day out.  Along with deployments and trainings that take my husband away from me, I think that the military inconveniences families in ways that don't make the evening news.  Maybe that's just my personal opinion.  While I've discovered that my passion is baking and cooking, I feel that I can share anecdotes of my life while sharing my experiences in the kitchen. Irony, to me, is funny so I share it.  And, thank you for reading.  You have no idea how much I appreciate it :)

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Coconut Lime Rice Pudding

 
I love grocery shopping.  I love grocery shopping in the middle of the day.  In the middle of the week. 

The stores are empty. 

The reason I love it is because I have time to look around. 


So on a Tuesday, as I was leisurely making my way up the "Ethnic Food Aisle", I came across this...

I've been thinking about rice pudding a lot lately.  More than any normal person should, actually.
This is particularly odd for me because I'm pretty sure I had never really had rice pudding before I met Scott.  Or if I did, it left absolutely no impression on me.

I put that coconut milk together with this.  Which is one of our favorite things ever.

 I got that 5 lb. bag of jasmine rice for $5. It should last for at least a month, what with our jasmine rice eating habits.

I also have an obsession with lime-y tropical drinks.
Tropical drinks...rice pudding...tropical drinks...rice pudding...


I combined these two thoughts that constantly seem to plague my mind.  

Coconut Lime Rice Pudding

1/2 cup cream of coconut*
1 cup skim milk
1 t. cinnamon
1 t. vanilla
1 t. lime zest
1/4 cup sugar

1 cup jasmine rice
1 1/2 cups water

 Boil the water, add the rice, cover, and set it on the lowest possible heat.  Cook for about 15 minutes or until all of the water is absorbed.

Add the milks, cinnamon, vanilla, lime zest, and sugar.  Stir well.

Keep it on the lowest heat possible, cover, and let the pudding cook for about 10-15 minutes.  It will start to boil, so stir frequently.  Mine looked done at about the 12 minute mark.  Stir well.  It will thicken as it sits.

*When you open the can of cream of coconut, you'll notice white cream at the top.  I poured the entire can of milk and cream into a bowl, stirred it up and took my half cup measurement out of that.  I froze the rest in a Tupperware container. 

Slow-Cooker Rice Pudding

I've been obsessed with the idea of rice pudding lately.  I don't know why.  We have a rice pudding recipe, but it's more like a custard.  I wanted something more like a pudding than a custard. 

I wanted to do this on Saturday, but the milk that was supposed to be brought back from Wal-Mart took an unexpected trip to Lowe's and Sportsmans' Warehouse.  So...I started this at 3am on Sunday in order to have it for breakfast.  It was worth it. 

Slow-Cooker Rice Pudding from A Year of Slow-Cooking

*just a note...make sure you use all 8 cups of milk.  I used skim.  It seems like a ridiculous amount and I would've cut it in half to 4 cups, but Scott made me use all 8 cups.  I'm glad I did, because the ONE cup of rice soaked up EIGHT cups of milk!

This is a must-make recipe.  It's healthy (ish) and made with on-hand ingredients.  Soooo easy.

Pineapple Chicken and Rice

I'm not sure if I ever actually wrote down why I started posting recipes.


Last summer, I cooked the same thing every week.  Scott was bored.  I was bored.

School started and I found myself still cooking the same thing every week and relying more and more on Wan Chai Ferry.  (You know.  The frozen dinners in a bag?  The Spicy Garlic Chicken is my very favorite.  I could/would eat it every day.)  I knew something had to be done.

I started reading food blogs.  I knew I had to start cooking with more variety.  Since I already loved to bake, this was just the next step.

These days, I have a running list of recipes I want to try and dinners that we have the ingredients for.  I shop based on ingredients now, instead of just what looks good.  Slow-cooker recipes are for the weekends, as well as new recipes.  The stand-bys are for during the week.  If I know how something is going to turn out, I'm more likely to make it on a weeknight.  The blogging of recipes gives me something to do, something to post about, and keeps me accountable for trying new things.  

BUT, I still love Wan Chai Ferry, and we still eat it once a month or so.  I truly love the taste, and I have not yet been able to replicate it.  Actually, this is the first time I tried something that could pass for Wan Chai Ferry.


It. is. a. WINNER.  Please make it.

I found the bones for this recipe here.  But I have trouble following recipes.  I took it up a notch with garlic and ginger.  And because I'm the person who refuses to look in the pantry before going shopping, I ended up using a bit of crushed pineapple instead of pineapple chunks. 

Pineapple Chicken and Rice
4-5 chicken breast tenders, cut into bit-size pieces
1/2 cup flour
1 t. salt
1 T. lemon pepper seasoning
Olive oil

1 bell pepper
3/4 cup sugar snap peas
1 medium onion
4-5 green onions
1 can of pineapple chunk, in juice (use about half the pineapple in the stir-fry)

Sauce:
2 t. soy sauce
1 tsp. grated garlic
1 tsp. grated ginger
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
Pineapple juice and water to make 1 cup of total liquid
2 T. cornstarch
2 t. chicken bouillon


Rice:
5 cups water
1 1/2 cups jasmine rice  (please, please, please use jasmine rice.  you'll thank me later.)

Mix all of the sauce ingredients together in a small saucepan and boil for 2-3 minutes.  Then let simmer until you're ready for it.

Preheat over to 375 degrees.  Mix together the flour, salt, and lemon pepper.  Dredge the chicken in it.  Heat about 8 T. of olive oil in a frying pan and brown the chicken.  Don't cook it the whole way.  Just give it a crispy coating.

Put the now-crispy chicken into a glass baking dish and cover it with about 2/3 of the sauce.  Bake at 375 for about 20 minutes.

In the same frying pan (pour out excess oil), stir fry the vegetables and pineapple.  Then toss them with the rest of the sauce.  After the chicken has cooked for 20 minutes, add the vegetables and bake for another 15 minutes. 

Make the rice and serve the stir fry over it.  Jasmine rice only needs to cook for about 15 minutes.

Slow-Cooker Risotto

Risotto takes a lot of stirring.  So a crockpot recipe from A Year of Slow Cooking seemed perfect.  And I had one heck of a time finding arborio rice.  The world of the internet said nothing could be substituted for arborio rice in risotto because it has so much starch in it.  So after checking (several times) at the commissary, arborio rice was not to be found.  I got it at Wal-Mart, and I must say that it's not cheap.  However, I really wanted to try this.
It's really not bad, but it wasn't my favorite either.  I think that there's some truth to the tried and true method of stirring and stirring risotto while slowly adding the liquid.  Some of the rice in this was still a little crunchy after 2 hours, while some was absolute mush.  And I hadn't had risotto in so long that I couldn't remember the precise texture.  The flavor was good, but it got kinda dry pretty quick.  Scott didn't have a comment one way or the other.  The leftovers are still in the fridge if anyone's interested!

Slow-Cooker Risotto (adapted from A Year of Slow-Cooking)

1 1/4 cups dry arborio rice
1/4 cup of olive oil
4 cups chicken broth (It called for 3 3/4 c. broth and 1/4 c. white wine.  I didn't have the wine on hand.)
2 large cloves of grated garlic (or finely chopped)
1/2 t. onion powder
1/2 t. salt
1/4 t. black pepper
1/2 cup of shredded parmesan cheese

Mix the rice and oil together in the slow cooker to coat.  Add the spices, garlic, and broth.  Give a couple stirs, then cook on high for 2-3 hours.  Stir in the shredded parmesan after you've turned it off and removed the lid. 

Rice Pudding

For Scott's birthday, I made him rice pudding.  Better for you than actual cake, and I'm not crazy about custard-y things.  So I know it would be all his.  However, if you're going to make rice pudding, this is the one to make.  It's his mom's recipe, and he used to make it by himself all the time, until I took it over.  It's so easy.  It can be a somewhat healthy dessert or a breakfast food.  I also use more than the called-for amount of rice.  Usually a full cup of cooked rice.  I have an issue with custard-y textures, so the more solid food suspended in the custard, the better.  I've also been thinking about the idea of chocolate rice pudding...

Rice Pudding
1/2 cup -1 cup of cooked rice (I do mine in the rice cooker.  I put in half a cup of uncooked rice and 1 cup of water and just used however much that makes.)
3 eggs
1/3 cup of sugar
pinch of salt
2 1/2 cup of milk
1 t. cinnamon
Freshly grated nutmeg for the top

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.  Fill a 9x13 cake pan with warm water (about halfway full).  Baking in a water bath is important; otherwise it will burn.

Whisk together (I do this right in the round Pyrex pan I bake it in) eggs, sugar, salt, milk, cinnamon, and vanilla.  Slowly stir in the cooked rice, getting rid of any clumps.  Grate about 1/2 t. of nutmeg over the top.  Place the glass pan into the cake pan with the water in it.  Bake for about 45 minutes.  Check the middle with a butter knife to see if it's done.  The time always varies for me.