Grandma’s rice pudding, savoury bread pudding and an easy loaf

Diane Cassere's easy bread loaf. Photo: Tony Jackman

By Maverick Insiders

17 Apr 2020

Daily Maverick’s Insiders were asked to send us their recipes to make while in isolation. We turn to warm comfort foods: rice pudding with raisins, made using leftover rice, scented with vanilla. And savoury bread pudding that uses up all those homemade loaves you’ve been making during lockdown.

Grandmother’s Rice Pudding

By Insider: Jane Barenblatt

Jane Barenblatt's rice pudding. Photo: Supplied

Growing up, we used to eat a lot of rice, and remember this dessert as a way to deliciously use up the leftover rice, so as to save wastage.

Today we are in a similar situation, where every leftover, could be used to create a second dish, one may even wish that there was more rice it is so scrumptious.

Ingredients

1½ Cups of cooked rice (I had leftover Basmati but any white rice works)

¼ cup raisins

2 large eggs

1½ cups of whole milk

½ cup sugar

½ teaspoon ground nutmeg (or cinnamon)

Additional milk

Method

Place rice and raisins in a greased casserole.

In a bowl whisk the eggs, milk, sugar and nutmeg and pour over rice.

Bake uncovered at 190℃ for 45-50 min, or until a knife inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Cool, and you can either pour a little milk/yoghurt/cream or ice cream over and serve warm.

Optional: Add some cut-up fresh fruit or puree of fruit.

Lockdown Loaf Savoury Bread Pudding

By Insider: Steve Kirk-Cohen

My favourite Eureka flour is still disappearing off the shelves pretty damn fast. This can only mean that the hoarding culprits who bought all my favourite Eureka flour before lockdown (see my last contribution to Corona Cooking) must by now have made bread out of the estimated 1,200kg of White Bread Flour sold collectively by the grocers of the City Bowl in Cape Town. At a flour content averaging 500g per loaf, this makes 2,400 loaves in 13 days, or 184 loaves daily. This led me to believe that there was an awful lot of bread going stale in the City Bowl.

My own statistics of 14 loaves in 13 days (a little over‑exuberant, I concede) led me to make available four fresh, hot loaves for clandestine collection by neighbours to stop it going to waste. It looks like a drug-deal with a difference: bake a loaf UnTouched by Human Hands (UTHH), remove it from the oven UTHH, put it on a rack with kitchen towel UTHH. and put it in the (open) boot of my car in the garage. Phone the neighbour, lure him/her into breaches of lockdown punishable by imprisonment (yes, fresh bread will do that to you under lockdown) and watch through a side window as they slink in – balaclava-ed and black-clothed – to snatch the loaf and scuttle home to safety.

The conclusion: this column needs to tell its readers what to do with bread that is going stale.

You could try Panzella, the Italian bread salad. But things Italian are not currently much sought after in this neck of the woods. You could use it up in making Gazpacho, but then Spain is similarly out of fashion. So instead, I suggest to you (pause for drum roll): BREAD PUDDING!

Oh, ja nee, that thing that my granny used to do with butter, castor sugar and sour cherries? Nope (ding) but thank you for playing. A “pudding” only became a dessert in the late 20th century. Just remember: Haggis is a pudding. Not that I would consider for a moment that you should eat that, even if you have been watching Outlander on Netflix. No, a pudding is, says Wiki: “A sweet or savoury steamed dish made with suet and flour, eg:a steak and kidney pudding”.

So cast aside those late C20 impressions of yours, and consider that a bread pudding can be as good as (nay, better than) a sweet one. The Mediterranean countries serve puddings across a wide spectrum of tastes and ingredients, from sweet to sweet-and-spicy, to savoury. Here is a savoury version; a good way to use up stale bread.

This will serve four. Bear in mind that any hoarded‑but‑wilting vegetable that can be sautéd alongside onion and garlic (think cubed up carrots, celery, peppers of any colour, or other frozen stuff like corn or peas) can be tossed into the mix.

Ingredients

Stale white bread, cubed up. Ciabatta works well, as does any Covid-baked bread in the city bowl. You will need about 75g per person, so 300g of sliced bread. The staler the better.

2 large onions

4 cloves garlic

60ml butter

60ml sun-dried tomato pesto or basil pesto

150g mozzarella, sliced or cubed

2-3 large firm tomatoes, sliced. Substitute a sachet of sliced-up sun-dried tomatoes if you feel so minded.

60ml black or green olives, pitted and sliced

300ml milk

250ml fresh cream

3 jumbo eggs

Herbs, preferably fresh. Think particularly oregano, marjoram, rosemary. Failing all else: a tablespoon (or 2 if you like it herby) of Italian Spices. Forgetting, for the moment, what is happening in Italy.

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

50g Parmesan, freshly grated

50g bread crumbs

Method

Preheat the oven to 180℃.

Soften the butter, and mix it with the pesto. Toss it around in a bowl with the stale bread.

Sauté the onion until it is soft and translucent.

Add the garlic, and sauté for 1 minute more.

Sauté any other lockdown veggies until they are soft enough to eat.

Layer the bread at the bottom of the dish. Put the sautéed veggies on top of the bread.

Layer with the mozzarella, tomatoes and olives.

Beat together the milk, cream, eggs and herbs.

Season with salt and pepper and pour over the pudding.

Mix together the Parmesan and the breadcrumbs, and sprinkle over the pudding.

Bake for 40-60 minutes or until puffed up and just set.

Serve warm, not piping hot.

This permits a wide variation. Try it with broccoli only. If you do, dispense with the custard and serve it with a cheesy white sauce, topped with lots of breadcrumbs. Ah yes, another thing to do with excess and going-stale bread. Make breadcrumbs. Nutribullet has made it so easy. Then put them in the freezer until you need them. You will be surprised how often you do.

Easy Bread Recipe from The Foodie’s Wife

Diane Cassere

Diane Cassere's easy bread loaf. Photo: Tony Jackman

This recipe makes two loaves in baking tins roughly 22cm x 12cm.

Ingredients

6 cups flour

⅔ of a cup sugar

1½ Tbsps dry yeast

1½ tsps salt

¼ cup oil

2 cups warm water

Method

Combine the sugar, yeast and water and set aside for about 10 minutes to froth (a little). I use a jug for this then pour it into a mixing bowl. Then mix this with the oil and salt. Add the six cups of flour SLOWLY and mix well.

Set aside this dough in a bowl in a warm place covered with a damp towel and leave for one hour ﹣ it should pretty much double in size.

Place the risen mix on a board or surface sprinkled with flour and fold, knead and then roll out (with a rolling pin or your hands). I sprinkle a bit more flour from time to time in this process to keep the dough workable.

Roll into a ball and flatten slightly ﹣ then cut the mixture in half. Make two oval rectangles of the dough and place each in a greased baking tin (Spray and Cook). Set it aside again covered with the towel and leave for about 30 minutes to rise while the oven heats. Then place in an oven heated to 180℃ for half an hour. Actually I usually set my oven at 190 and bake for 40 minutes because my oven is not as hot as some.

When it is risen and golden brown, it is done. DM/TGIFood

Insiders shared their second batch of recipes to make during lockdown on 3 April when Maverick Insiders got creative and turn to the basics. Send your Isolation Baking/Cooking recipes, with a hi-resolution photograph, to: [email protected]

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