Ris a' la mande - Check!

Yesterday I stirred up my first pot of rice pudding. I've pasted the recipe below right from the email because I love how Lone gives me metric units...and gallons. So thoughtful.

I was a bit concerned at first...I weighed out the 150 g of rice and was then supposed to add to that tiny pile OVER 4 cups of milk! But I put faith in my friend's holiday recipe and it turned out just fine. You know how at Danish Christmas parties the porridge comes out and all the grown men get goofy boy grins on their faces and start shoveling it in? Well, Rich even did that. And other people at the New Year's Eve party also went for seconds, so I'm considering it a success.

I heated up some canned cherry pie filling for the cherry "gravy". Because the color of the canned gelatinous ooze was a bright and un-natural pink, I added some red wine and grated nutmeg to it. Much more appealing.

Oh Yeah - and I got the whole almond. Happy Birthday to me!

Lone's ris a' la mande - serves 4-6 people:

Cook risengrød (rice porridge) of 1 liter milk and 150 gram (5.3 ounces) grødris (the special rice for this kind of porridge - hope you have this in the US?). I used arborio rice and basically stirred it constantly while slowly adding milk. This step took about 1 hour.

Empty 1 vanilla pod into 2-3 spoon (not teaspoon) sugar and put the emptied vanilla pod down in the porridge while this boils. After the porridge is finished and lukewarm put in the sugar/vanilla and put it in the fridge or a cool place. (remember to take out the vanilla pod).

100 gram (3.5 ounces) of almonds are chopped into small pieces (remember to save one or more whole almonds for the mandelgaver (presents)). The chopped almonds are putted into whipped cream (made out of 0,5 liter cream (0.13 gallons).

Before serving you mix the cream/almonds and the rice porridge and still keep it cool if you make it a few hours before serving. This is served with the hot cherry gravy.

Although it turned out just like it was supposed to, next time I make it I'll probably added the whipped cream when its still a bit warm and runny, and serve it at that temperature too. I know its not "the right way" but I think that's when it had the stronger vanilla flavor (because I was of course taste testing along the way).

I purposfully did not bring along any french pâté or foie gras to the party. They just look too much like cat food. Blah.