I had another go at cooking couscous last night. I bought a packet with larger grains than the supermarket one from a wholefood shop, hoping that they would be less likely to turn to porridge, and remembered someone telling me that I did not need to simmer the pan, merely pour hot water over the couscous and leave it somewhere warm for a few minutes to take up the moisture. After several minutes of standing on the warming plate of the Aga, the couscous had gone soft on the outside, but was still distinctly chewy on the inside, while the water had cooled to tepid. I ended up tipping the mixture into a small saucepan and giving it a quick turn on the cool hob, where the grains cooked through, while leaving an interesting layer stuck to the bottom of the saucepan. Maybe the pour-and-leave method does not work with wholefood shop large grained couscous.
The grains of the finished product swelled to about the size of slugs' eggs, and remained separate, instead of turning to mush. They had a glossy appearance rather than the soft fluffiness I was hoping for, and in the mouth could almost be described as slimy, if you were feeling unkind. The Systems Administrator took a small helping, sampled a couple of mouthfuls, and left the rest of it on the side of the plate, explaining politely that while the chilli chicken was very nice, he really did not like couscous. I think it will be better to save further experiments for evenings when the SA is out. Luckily, the chickens do like left over couscous, even the strange sheet of globules stuck together with starch which came off the bottom of the saucepan after I'd soaked it.
Nothing daunted, this morning I set out to make a rice pudding. My parents were coming to lunch, and my mother had expressed a yearning for Aga rice pudding like she used to make twenty five years ago when she had an Aga. Apparently it is the long slow cooking that does it, and she is not willing to run her oven for that long, while tinned ones are too sweet. I'm not convinced the cost of running an oven is really a reason not to make rice pudding, since if she sticks to cooking it in the winter when she presumably would have the central heating on, she could always compensate by turning the thermostat down a notch or two. It is at least twenty five years since I've made rice pudding, but I thought I'd give it a go.
I checked a few recipes on the internet, finding one which warned darkly not to overcook the pudding or the rice would go peculiar, then settled on the Mary Berry book which came with the Aga. Mary Berry is a National Treasure. Her rice pudding recipe was sure to be a winner. Perhaps I should have been warned by her comment that no two rice puddings ever seemed to come out the same, and the indicated cooking time of two to three hours. That's quite a window of uncertainty, if you would like to serve lunch at one o'clock, and have the pudding follow the main course after a reasonable interval.
Mary Berry said to start the pudding off in the top of the baking oven, which is hot but not really hot in a four door Aga, give it half an hour or so to form a skin, then move it over to the simmer oven, which is just below boiling point, and give it two (or perhaps three) hours until it was done. I kept an eye on the pudding for the first half hour, having dark visions of it boiling over and stinking the house out with burnt milk, but after its allotted time it showed no signs of doing that. Nor of forming a skin. I gave it several bursts of another five minutes at hot, then moved it over.
When I came to get the main course, which was keeping warm in the simmer oven, the pudding was still very liquid, not so much a creamy nutmeg flavoured slightly granular paste as a dish of warm milk with grains of barely cooked rice sitting in the bottom of it. I shoved it back in the hot oven while we ate the goulash, warning the party that if it wasn't done by the time we'd finished then we'd be having slightly under ripe bananas with maple syrup for pudding, or small oranges. The rice pudding just about made the grade, and was voted highly for flavour, but I don't think the consistency was what my mother was after. She said the trick was to stir it periodically to break the skin, so that more of the liquid could evaporate off.
The Systems Administrator turned out to be unexpectedly keen on rice pudding, and became fired up with the desire to recreate the puddings his mother used to make. Those involved evaporated milk, and were cooked quite quickly in a hot oven before lunch. The cold remains were apparently delicious. I told the SA to be my guest, since we now had enough pudding rice to furnish, at a rough estimate, about two dozen more puddings. We should have got the hang of it by the time we've used that lot up.
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