Southeast Asian Black Rice Pudding with Coconut Milk
Rice pudding and coconut are both divisive food items, often inviting extreme reactions from supporters as well as loathers. As for me, I love both. And the sticky, sweet, faintly salty black rice coconut pudding that’s served in Southeast Asian restaurants is even better than the sum of its parts. (San Franciscans can buy a perfect little tub of the stuff at the massive New May Wah mega-market on Clement Street—one of my favorite hangouts.)
This dish calls for glutinous rice, which also goes by the appropriate name of sticky rice. According to the great digital know-it-all, Wikipedia, legend claims that sticky rice “was used to make the mortar in the construction of the Great Wall of China. Chemical tests have confirmed that this is true for the city walls of Xian.” (Just thought I’d share.) You can find sticky rice at Asian markets or at grocery stores that have a good international section. You can order it online, too. Actually, I imagine this pudding would be delicious made with any kind of rice, it would just wind up with a different texture and/or color. And you’ll probably have to adjust the quantity of water given here. If you do experiment with other types of rice, come back and post a comment about the results!
