Arroz Doce- A Sweet (late) Start to 2010

Rice Puddings are common to all the cuisines.The mix of rice and water/milk is commonly mixed with a sweetner and other regional ingredients and served as a celebratory dessert.Starting with the Indian Kheer or South Indian Payasam we can see several variations added to the rice-sugar -milk mix.Do check the several tongue twisting names for simple payasam in Wikipedia.

Arroz Doce or Arroz con Leite (Rice & Milk )is Portuguese sweet rice pudding.What makes it Portuguese is the use of Lemon and cinnamon.As with kheers several versions are available each one more better and richer and as tastier as the other ,some with eggs,some eggless and some with condensed milk.I have adapted mine from the eggless version seen in Recipezaar and have also referenced several other sites.

Ingredients:
White Short Grain Rice: 1 cup
Water: 2 cups
Hot Milk: 2 cups +
Sugar: 1 cup +
Lemon zest: 1-2 lemons

Optional Ingredients:
Cinnamon stick
Butter: 1-2 tbsp
Salt: a pinch

Garnish:
Powdered Cinnamon

Preparation:

Bring water to boil in a heavy bottomed pan.Add butter and cinnamon stick to it if interested.Add rice and reduce to a simmer and let it cook till the water is reduced to half or when rice starts to cook.Then remove the cinnamon stick and add hot milk,sugar,remaining zest and continue cooking till a porridge or oatmeal consistency is reached when the rice is fully cooked and looks creamy absorbing all the milk and water.Remove from heat.You can serve it warm itself or let it cool or even chilled.Upon cooling it thickens again.If you like to have a thinner consistency then add more milk as needed.

Serve garnished with cinnamon powder.You can give designs with cinnamon powder.I simply sprinkled it atop .

If you want eggy version,then once oatmeal consistency is reached,you add atleast 2 eggyolks to this.You can find eggy version here.The addition of eggs makes the dish more rich and yellowy.Mine looks creamy and not yellow.If you want to make it more rich but eggless,you can add little condensed milk reducing the sugar.I used butter just to make it a bit rich.

Now a cinnamony lemony creamy rice pudding.A perfect start to 2010.After a short & much needed break,I am back and am ready to rock 2010 (er not literally!) with a dish having my favourite spice: Cinnamon. And obviously a perfect dessert entry to AWED:Portuguese,an event by Dear DK and currently hosted by Extremely HardWorking Blogger Priya.

Update on 15 Jan 2010: Rice pudding - be it Indian Kheer/Payasam or Greek Ryzogalo or Portuguese Arroz Doce - is a comfort food and thus cinnamony Arroz Doce is also on way to SHF# 61: Sweet Comforts ,an event by Jennifer the Domestic Goddess and currently at A MerrierWorld