Kitchen Alchemy

During my recent stay to White Plains, I taught my nephew, who is a serious foodie and a great cook, how to make the rice pudding that my grandmother's family has been making for generations. My grandmother only made this pudding at Christmas time, when she made a massive batch because she not only had to make sure there was enough for all the relatives who'd drop by on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Years Eve, but neighborhood people often placed orders for the stuff, giving her a few bucks to prepare it. I remember the shelves in her fridge would be filled with platters, plates and bowls of the stuff - so much so that she'd often have to store some in my mother's fridge.


This stuff is not like any rice pudding I've ever encountered anywhere, including in the kitchens of other Puerto Ricans. It's not a white pudding, but deep, dark brown, from lots of cinnamon and ginger, and other stuff. It's not runny, but has a consistency closer to polenta - it can be sliced. I've never seen anything even close to it in any cookbook, Caribbean or otherwise. When my grandmother died, she took the recipe with her. There were lots of us who'd helped her with bits and pieces of it, but no one who knew all the ingredients or all the steps. My mother collected as much information as she could from anyone who'd ever been there when Abuela made the pudding, and she tapped into her own memory. One person would remember this ingredient, a second person would remember another. After several attempts, like some sort of rice pudding alchemist, my mother cracked the code and made a batch of rice pudding that was exactly like her mother's in every way. She wrote down the method, and sent it to me. I say "method," because there are no exact amounts listed, no measurements of anything, no exact cooking times...it's most definitely a method driven, in large part, by instincts. This part is done when the kitchen starts to smell good, that part is done when it becomes difficult to stir, you've added enough of this when the color is just right, the amount of butter needed is a couple of pats, or whatever feels right. That's how this rice pudding is made.


I've made this pudding many, many times and fed it to many, many friends. They all say it sure doesn't *look* like rice pudding. They all go crazy over it, once they've tasted it. When I've served it at dinner parties, there are always people asking if they can take some home with them. There are never any leftovers. Ever.


I've shared the method with people in writing, but that doesn't seem to work. At least for the first go-round, someone who knows what it should look like and smell like at every stage needs to be there to say, "Ok, you need more cinnamon," or "Lower the flame!," or, "No - keep stirring, even though that seems crazy."


This is why I wanted to teach Steven how to make this when I was right in the kitchen with him. When we were done, we drove all the way out to Brooklyn to deliver some pudding to my uncle, Frank. He grew up eating this pudding. Frank does not mince words. If he hadn't liked it, he would have said so. He would have asked, "What the hell is this supposed to be?" Instead, he sent a text message reading, "You guys NAILED it." This made me feel so proud.


The funny thing is, I'm the only person I know of who has tried this pudding and doesn't like it. I'm not a big rice person. I'm not crazy about cinnamon. Sweetness, in general, isn't my jam, and this is a sweet dessert. I don't really care for it - something my family has always thought was nuts - but I love making it. I love making it because it reminds me of my grandmother, who put so much energy into it every year, and took such pride in it. It reminds me of my mother, who set about to rediscover this lost secret and make sure she could pass it down to me. When I make it again, it will remind me, too, of Steven. He is, at the very least, the 5th generation of our family to make it. I'm sure it's been in the family much longer than that, but I can only trace it back definitively to my great grandmother, Jacobina, who was born in 1872.

One day, maybe Alex and Lily will learn how to make this from their dad, by watching him, and taking note of how brown "brown" is, how the kitchen should smell before they stop cooking down the ginger, when to stop stirring.