Ris à la Malta

This one's been on my list for a long time. It is the Swedish take on the Danish risalamande, which itself may have been inspired by a French rice dish. There are speculations on the Swedish name – it could be a mispronunciation of the "alamande" or it could be that the Swedish version contains orange, which in French cooking terms is referred to as "à la Malte" or "maltaise", at least accoding to Larousse Gastronomique. Regardless, it is a glorified rice pudding with exotic flavourings and whipped cream to make it very rich and luxurious.

Depressingly, searching for recipes didn't result in much and I forgot to look in my big Swedish cook book from the 1950s. I didn't like any of the few recipes that I did find, so I decided to make things up along the way, but the recipes did help me in the right direction.

The main recipe I used is from Larousse Gastronomique from about 25 years ago, the Swedish recipes didn't seem to use any sugar apart from the odd tablespoon of icing sugar in the whipped cream, really not enough to make it sweet enough for a dessert. The Swedish recipe either calls for decorating with oranges or using orange juice in the rice pudding. I didn't quite like the idea of this, so decided to use orange zest instead. Here is what I concocted.

Ingredients
10 portions

200 g pudding rice
5 dl water
2 pinches salt
1 l full milk
zest of one orange
1 tbsp vanilla sugar
⅓ tsp ground cinnamon
3 dl whipping cream
2½ tbsp icing sugar

Method

1. Put the milk, sugar, 1 pinch of salt, orange zest, vanilla sugar and cinnamon in a large saucepan and bring to the boil.
2. Boil the water in a kettle, then pour into a saucepan together with 1 pinch of salt and put on the hop to keep it boiling. Add the rice and cook for 2 minutes.
3. Drain from the water, then pour into the saucepan with the milk, turn the heat down to low, cover and let simmer for 40 minutes, stirring occasionally.
4. Remove from the heat, cover the surface with cling film to prevent a skin forming and allow to cool down to room temperature. To speed things up you can place the saucepan in cold water in the sink.
5. Whip the cream together with the icing sugar to soft peaks. Stir through the rice pudding if it has set, then fold the whipped cream into it.
6. Serve with a topping of choice - fruit compote or jam, chopped nuts or biscuit crumbs.

This dessert must be at least at room temperature before folding in the whipped cream, otherwise the cream will just melt. It should be served immediately after folding the whipped cream, but if you make it a couple of days in advance, store in the fridge and fold in the whipped cream shortly before serving. I found some recipes that recommend adding butter to the rice pudding, but I think this is way too much.

I knew this would turn out well as soon as I took the rice pudding off the heat. The kitchen smelled of orange and cinnamon, almost like Christmas. But once I added the whipped cream, that really raised the bar, so luxuriant and rich. There was a small bell in the back of my mind that this probably is not healthy, but I chose to ignore it. The only thing is that I couldn't make it look good when I served it, so I didn't take a photo. But having thought about it a little, I think it would look pretty if shaped with ab ice cream scoop and decorated with something brightly coloured, like edible flowers. I think the others liked it too. As it's rice, it was very filling, so I recommend small portions, if eating after a larger meal.