It Looks Like Sh*t

Mmmm. There's not much better than cooking up something when you don't know what the hell you're doing and having it turn out delicious.

Today's episode actually began Sunday when I made chocolate ice custard. I had about 1 cup extra that wouldn't fit in the ice cream maker and I thought I'd turn it into pudding. I finally got around to trying that tonight. I had the custard on the stove warming up while I looked for my corn starch. I don't know the exact recipe for pudding but it's something like chocolate, milk, sugar (basically the same as the custard) plus corn starch. I could not find the corn starch which I could have sworn I bought for some other recipe. Damn.

Well, I had some leftover rice (brown, short grain) so I decided to try for chocolate rice pudding. I have no idea how to make rice pudding but I figured it was similar to regular pudding but maybe without the corn starch. I added some rice. While that heated I was closing the cabinet with all my baking stuff when, hidden behind the divider was, of course, the corn starch. The pudding was getting nice and warm but it looked like chocolate rice soup so I added some corn starch. After a minute it looked like....chocolate rice soup. I didn't want to add any more corn starch so I put it away. I turn around and the soup had instantaneously turned nearly solid and I pulled it off the heat. I put the, now, pudding into a couple tiny bowls and stuck them in the fridge. I am eating one now. Mmmmm. The rice is very chewy and overall the dish is quite good.

If you'd like to try to replicate it, here's the basic ingredients:
4 cups half-n-half, 1 cup sugar, 4 egg yolks (I'd skip these), 1/2 lb. Bittersweet chocolate, 1 T vanilla (BTW-this makes an OK, not great, ice custard)

Take 1 cup of above mixture, 3/4 cup cooked short grain brown rice, some (maybe 1-2 T.) corn starch and heat. If it boils without solidifying, it needs more corn starch.