May | 2011 | christao408

One recipe that caught my eye a week or so ago while browsing the New York Times’s website was Caramel Rice Flan. This egg-enhanced rice pudding is made with risotto rice, giving it a nicer “toothy” feel when you eat it. The best part is the homemade caramel which lines the bottom of the souffle dish, subsequently becoming the sauce for the flan when it is flipped upside down and unmolded onto a serving dish. I decided to try the recipe for dinner last Friday at Ko and Per’s place, where Tawn and his girlfriends gathered to watch the royal wedding.

The recipe takes about an hour of active time to prepare and then around two hours to bake. After that, it needs at least six hours in the refrigerator so it really is a “make today for tomorrow” sort of dessert. Ingredients include arborio rice (one of the types you use for risotto), milk, cinnamon sticks, ground cardamom, lemon zest, cardamom pods, cream, eggs, egg yolks, salt, and sugar.

The recipe said it serves 8-10 but looking at it, it appeared to be a big recipe so I cut it in half.

The recipe is moderately complex, requiring several saucepans, a few bowls, and a strainer. Helpful to have everything prepared in advance and maybe even an extra pair of hands along the way. The first step is to simmer the rice in boiling water for about 15 minutes to start cooking it.

You then drain the rice, then add it to a medium saucepan with most of the milk, the cinnamon, and ground cardamom, bringing it to a boil and then lowering the temperature and simmering it for 30 minutes, cooking until the rice is very tender.

Any unabsorbed milk is poured off and then the rice is put in the bowl and lemon jest is stirred in.

You then make the custard, cooking the rest of the milk, the cream, and the cardamom pods. While that is coming to a simmer, in a separate bowl you whisk together the eggs, egg yolks, and part of the sugar.

When the milk comes to a simmer, you temper the eggs by adding the milk and cream mixture to it a little at a time, whisking constantly. This keeps the eggs from scrambling.

You then strain the mixture back into the pan, discarding the cardamom and any bits of egg that scrambled. Next, stir in the rice.

This was the point where I felt like too many things were going on at one time and the recipe would be easier if a second set of hands was helping. That way elements of the dish could come together simultaneously.

The next step was to make the caramel, heating the remaining sugar and a little water in a saucepan until it boils and starts to caramelize. I think I had the heat too high because it burned a bit, leaving the caramel with a slightly bitter taste. Must remember to be gentle when making caramel, something I have little experience doing.

The caramel is poured into the buttered souffle dish and quickly swirled around the sides before it starts to cool. This was easier said than done! Then, pour the rice and custard mixture on top.

The souffle dish is placed in the middle of a baking pan and boiling water is filled about halfway up the side of the pan. This water bath helps the custard cook more evenly, instead of the outsides cooking too fast and the inside still being uncooked. Cover the pan with foil, making some small slits in the corners of the foil for steam to escape.

Pop it into a 300-degree oven for about 2 hours, checking after 90 minutes. Try to use a better bending technique than I did as I was just begging for a strained back.

Since I had a half recipe I failed to anticipate that the cooking time would be less. When I checked at about 1 hour, 40 minutes the flan was a bit more solid than desired.

Remove and allow to cool. At this point when I shook the dish it didn’t jiggle very much. The idea would be just a little jiggling in the center when it comes out of the oven, as it will continue to cook for several more minutes. Once cool, cover the flan with plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for at least 6 hours.

The real moment of truth was how well it would unmold. You set the souffle dish in a larger pot with hot water in it for about 20 minutes, letting the caramel melt again and then loosening the edges of the flan. Invert it onto a serving dish. Expecting a potential disaster (after all, the recipe warns of this possibility), I decided to film it for posterity.

And the result is….

Quite pleasant to look at, actually. Not quite as beautiful as the picture illustrating the Times’ article, but they probably had a better set-up for photography.

The texture was like a pretty thick rice pudding, a little eggy but not overly so. The caramel was burned, there was no getting around the bitter flavor. I attribute it to making a half-recipe, which is so little that in even my smallest saucepan, overheating was a risk. Next time, maybe I’ll add a dollop of butter at the end to tame it a bit.

All in all, though, it was a nice dessert. I’m going to try it again soon at the full recipe and see how it turns out.

During a March visit to Singapore, I decided to ride the subway out to the nether reaches of the island to visit the light rail lines. Singapore has three light rail lines that form four loops connecting to stations in the rail-based public transit network. They were built with the express purpose of serving master-planned housing estates, giving residents a door-to-door rail service that allowed them to get around without increasing road-based traffic.

The light rail itself is clean and efficient, with the automated cars running regularly on elevated tracks that weave between housing towers. Below is a video that overviews my experience on the system, including a startling discovery I made about how technology is used to solve a perhaps unforseen privacy problem.

Matters of urban planning and design have always interested me and for a short while in university I was an urban planning major. Examples of transit-oriented land use, like the developments that surround the light rail lines in Singapore, make me think about ways that similar lessons could be applied in the United States.

A country with a plentitude of land, since World War II development in the US has been oriented towards the automobile, resulting in more and more sprawl and fewer and fewer neighborhoods where one can walk from home to anywhere useful. With rising fuel prices and ever-increasing congestion on the roads, it amazes me that there has been continued resistance not only to public transit, but transit-oriented development.

There are a few examples in the United States of what is sometimes called “New Urbanism”, a design philosophy that promotes more walkable and transit-friendly neighborhoods that include mixed use buildings – shops, businesses, and residences in the same general area. Not unlike traditional older neighborhoods in an urban environment, there are small shops on the main streets, some apartments overhead or in the surrounding blocks, and then single-family dwellings set further back. Orenco Station, a neighborhood in the Portland, OR area is a good example of this type of planning.

(Comparing the “suburban sprawl” photo earlier in this entry with the master plan for Orenco Station, you’ll notice that suburbia has a lot of dead-end streets, which means there’s always a long way to go to get out of the neighborhood.)

Some defining elements of this new style of development include:

The neighborhood has a discernible center. This is often a square or a green and sometimes a busy or memorable street corner. A transit stop would be located at this center.
Most of the dwellings are within a five-minute walk of the center, an average of roughly ¼ mile or 1,320 feet (0.4 km).
There are a variety of dwelling types — usually houses, rowhouses, and apartments — so that younger and older people, singles and families, the poor and the wealthy may find places to live.
At the edge of the neighborhood, there are shops and offices of sufficiently varied types to supply the weekly needs of a household.
An elementary school is close enough so that most children can walk from their home. There are small playgrounds accessible to every dwelling — not more than a tenth of a mile away.
Streets within the neighborhood form a connected network, which disperses traffic by providing a variety of pedestrian and vehicular routes to any destination. The streets are relatively narrow and shaded by rows of trees. This slows traffic, creating an environment suitable for pedestrians and bicycles.
Parking lots and garage doors rarely front the street. Parking is relegated to the rear of buildings, usually accessed by alleys.

As I look at these design elements, I see of list of things that have a whole lot of “pros” and very few, if any, “cons”. While the US will never go the route of Singaporean style land use – there’s no comparable acquiesence to the wisdom of the government, for starters – it does seem that a more comprehensive approach to land use would benefit the United States and our quality of life in the decades to come.

Further reading: Interesting blog entry titled “Five Causes of Suckiness in American Architecture“.

christao408

The adventures of an expat American who moved to Bangkok for his husband.

Monthly Archives: May 2011

Caramel Rice Flan

Singapore Light Rail and New Urbanism