Experiment: Black Tea Rice Pudding

3 cups whole milk
1/3 cup basmati rice
2 tbls sugar
1 egg
2 bags of black tea like English Breakfast
pinch of salt

Pour the milk into a pot, put the tea bags in, bring it to a simmer and let reduce until it's about 2 1/2 cups. Add the rice, salt and sugar and let cook until the rice is tender, about 20 minutes, stirring frequently. Whisk the egg and add a couple tbls, one tbl at a time, to it, whisking the whole time. Slowly add the egg mixture to the rice and milk, again stirring the whole time. Cook for another minute or so, until thick. It's best hot.

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This was one of those things that seemed like such a good idea at the time but just didn't quite work out the way I had hoped. I was looking for a light, creamy dessert that tasted like a good cup of tea. What I got was some wicked thick goo that tasted like... something else. It's not that it was horrible, it just wasn't that good. I'm going to try it again at some point, make some changes and see how it goes. For one I don't think I'm going to put an egg in next time, I think that is what did in the texture. I also might not use basmati, but that was the only rice I could find around here and I didn't feel like going to the grocery store. The nutty flavor was actually pretty good with the tea, but I think it might have been too competetive. Anyway, here is what I did.

First, as the recipe states, I poured the milk in a pot. Tossed in the tea bags and let it simmer for a while. Another thing I might change next is instead of infusing the milk with the tea using a half a cup or so of very strong brewed tea. Then I added the rice, sugar and salt and let it cook until it was tender. I didn't get shots of whisking the egg, or whisking some of the hot rice mixture into it but I assure you that that's what I did next. I took the tea bags out at this point. Then I poured it slowly into rice, stirring constantly. I used a whisk for this and it broke up some of the rice, which kind of sucked. But it also reincorporated the skin that had formed when I walked away for about three seconds while it was cooking and that was good. So I cooked and stirred until it was thick. Very thick. Much thicker than I thought it would be. But there it is, black tea rice pudding. It wasn't great, but I think with some changes it could be. More experiments are clearly needed.