Golden Milk

There is a thin and permeable line between cooking for health and cooking for pleasure.

There is a massive overlap between eating well and feeling well.

Lately my little kitchen experiments have started to spill out of the sustenance realm and into the realm of medicine and healing.

Homemade cough medicine!  Body butters and salves!  St. John's wort steeping in oil on the windowsill, turning it red.

This is the kind of fun I've been having.

This little wonder straddles that line between food and medicine, between health and pleasure.

I'd seen recipes for golden milk on blogs before, mainly from Indian cooks.  It is supposed to bring warmth and vitality, restore emotional balance, and work against inflammation of all kinds.

Warm and sweet and spicy and soothing.

It helps that I won a whole pound of high-class turmeric on the internet a few months ago.

Winning is awesome!

What am I going to do with all of this turmeric??

Maybe this.

I'm from a long line of auto-immune afflicted folks with various manifestations of it.  Mine is the skin rash, eczema.  It comes and goes, but mostly just stays.

I have tried everything over the years and have little hope for a cure any time soon.  Some things work for a while, then stop working, for whatever reason.

But I made this for myself today and you know what?  A particularly bad outbreak I was having on my hand is already fading.

So maybe I have a little hope, at least.

Golden Milk
adapted from Rosemary Gladstar

1/4 c turmeric powder
Almond milk (cow's or coconut are fine too!)
Honey

First, make a turmeric base by combining turmeric powder with 1/2 cup of water in a saucepan.  Bring it to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer until mixture becomes a thick paste.  Cool it and store in the refrigerator - this paste will make many servings of golden milk!

To make milk:  Combine 1 teaspoon turmeric paste with 1 cup milk and honey to taste (I used about 1 tablespoon) in a saucepan, heat until steaming.  Put mixture in blender, blend until frothy.

This can also be drunk cold or at room temperature, whatever your preference.

Indian Rice Pudding (Kheer)

And just like that, it's my second trimester. It's really strange to move in the space of about 24 hours from being nauseated by the very color of the paint on my walls (it's a soft light brown, soothing in almost every case, except for when you can't stop thinking about how it looks like the color of rotten eggplant) to suddenly craving every little thing (mostly ranch dressing...copious amounts of ranch dressing...you're serving a white truffle champagne vinaigrette? BRING ME RANCH!).





But the good news is this: I seem to have survived, and as of yesterday, baby has a confirmed heartbeat. Hooray! And now, bring on the second trimester. By all accounts, this is supposed to be the good one.





And please, thank you, let me start cooking again! How I missed it. I started out simple though, I'm not yet completely back on my feet, and made this delicious yet easy Indian rice pudding.





I'm not sure if you've had kheer before. You probably have. If you've been to an Indian restaurant they almost always have it. If you've been to an Indian buffet, it's almost always there. It's warm, soft, delicately sweet, and just rich enough to feel indulgent, without leaving you gasping.





I made a few variations on the original recipe, billed as Alton Brown's Indian Rice Pudding from the Food Network (what could go wrong?). I substituted arborio rice for long grain or basmati, although I'm sure either of those would do fine. I like arborio for rice puddings because its high starch content gives it a creamier texture. Also I just had all this arborio rice hanging around, and I'm not a big fan of risotto, its other traditional use.



I used almond slivers instead of crumbled pistachios simply because I couldn't find pistachios in time. My store only had roasted on offer. Disappointing, store. Disappointing.



Anyway, this rice pudding was quickly made and quickly vanished down the hatch. It's so light and sweet, it makes the perfect ending to any meal, especially a spicy one.



Anna's Indian Rice Pudding (kheer), adapted from Alton Brown

1 cup cooked arborio rice
1 cup whole milk
1/2 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup coconut milk
2 ounces sugar, approximately 1/4 cup
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 1/2 ounces raisins, approximately 1/3 cup
1 1/2 ounces slivered almonds, approximately 1/3 cup

In a large nonstick saute pan over medium heat, combine the cooked rice and milk. Heat until the mixture begins to boil. Decrease the heat to low and cook at a simmer until the mixture begins to thicken, stirring frequently, approximately 5 minutes.

Increase the heat to medium, add the heavy cream, coconut milk, sugar, and cardamom and continue to cook until the mixture just begins to thicken again, approximately 5 to 10 minutes. Use a whisk to help prevent the cardamom from clumping. Once the mixture just begins to thicken, remove from the heat and stir in the raisins and almonds. Transfer the mixture to individual serving dishes or a glass bowl and place plastic wrap directly on the surface of the pudding. It will set as it cools. Serve chilled or at room temperature.