We have done many food and tea pairing videos but in this one, we thought that it would be fascinating to try to reflect the flavours of a tea in a dish. In other words, could we create a dessert that represented the aromas and tastes of one particular tea?
For this experiment we decided to pick our Pudding Announcer PuErh tea because for myself and many others, it has a distinct starchy rice pudding taste with high notes of jasmine and strawberry.
Grab one of the last cakes of Pudding Announcer if you would like to taste this tea and perhaps recreate this recipe.
VEGAN SMOKED RICE PUDDING & JASMINE STRAWBERRIES
Serves 6
Ingredients:
FOR RICE PUDDING
200g Short Grain Rice (Arborio or similar)
Any affordable Oolong tea for smoking (do not use high-quality tea)
400ml Tin Coconut Milk
50g Raw Cane Sugar (or sweetener of your choice)
Heaped Tablespoon of Coconut Cream
800ml Milk of your choice
Pinch of Salt
A teaspoon of any neutral flavour oil
A small piece of lemon peel
Grating of Nutmeg
2-3 Pandan leaves cut into pieces
FOR TOPPING
300g Fresh Strawberries
Jasmine Jade Oolong (or your favourite high-quality Jasmine tea)
2 heaped teaspoons of a good Strawberry Jam
25g Sugar
A squeeze of Lemon Juice
Pinch of Salt
Raw Pecans
METHOD
Smoke rice by placing in a thin layer in a bowl on top of a stand in a tall pan. Add the smoking tea to the base of the pan and turn on heat to high and wait for the tea to begin smoking. Cover tightly with a lid or foil and control heat to maintain a gentle smoke for 15 minutes. Turn off heat and leave covered for 10 minutes.
Mix the milk, coconut milk, sugar, salt, nutmeg and lemon peel in a large bowl. Once rice is ready, add to the mixture and stir thoroughly. Transfer to a lightly greased baking dish (pie dish is ideal but any dish that has about 5cm depth id fine). Distribute rice evenly. Sprinkle the pandan on top and use a spoon to dunk them into the milk.
Place in a preheated oven at 140 Celsius (280 Fahrenheit) for one hour.
Chop or lightly crush the strawberries. In a bowl add the sugar and salt and about 50ml of really strongly brewed Jasmine tea. Mix this Jasmine syrup with the strawberries with a squeeze of lemon juice and leave to macerate for at least an hour.
After an hour in the oven, remove the rice pudding and take away all of the pandan leaves. Stir in the coconut cream and mix the pudding thoroughly to even out the rice before returning to the oven for another hour.
Remove the rice pudding from the oven and check consistency – add milk if the pudding is too dry but be very careful to stir gently to avoid the rice grains breaking up too much which will make the pudding stodgy.
Add the strawberry jam and lemon juice to the fresh strawberries to get the right taste and texture.
Serve the rice pudding warm in a bowl topped with the Jasmine strawberries and some piece of pecan.
To serve cold, refrigerate the pudding and then mix gently with milk to get the right consistency (it should be thinner than the warm pudding). Top with strawberries (I prefer the cold one without pecans).
