Rice Pudding With Whiskey & Vanilla Blackberry Compote

I live near an area of marshland. Whenever I go for a walk there, I notice the huge blackberry brambles and come each fall, I have been wanting to go and pick me some ripe blackberries. This fall, I finally managed to put my hankering for wild berries into action. Marco and I went the other week, and never have I seen or tasted blackberries as sweet and juicy. We managed to pick over a kilo in less than an hour, and I kept saying: "At the grocery store we would have had to pay at least £2.50... £5.00... £7.50... for this many berries". I felt very thrifty and ever so pleased with the husband and myself as our basket was filling up.
I froze most of our haul for a later day, but some of the berries were made into a compote pretty much as soon as we got home. I love rice pudding any time, but serving it with warming and aromatic stewed blackberries made the dish complete.
You can serve this either warm or cold, or with cold pudding and warm compote, or with warm pudding and cold compote. Yup. Any way you fancy.

RICE PUDDING WITH WHISKEY & VANILLA BLACKBERRY COMPOTE (serves 4)


Need To Have:

FOR THE RICE PUDDING

100g pudding rice
3 tbsp golden caster sugar
1 bay leaf
1 pint milk

FOR THE COMPOTE

500g blackberries
1 vanilla pod
3 tbsp whiskey
5 tbsp golden caster sugar (or more to taste)


Need To Do:

To make the rice pudding, put rice, sugar, bay leaf and milk into a saucepan with a heavy base.

Bring to the boil while stirring, and then turn the heat down very low and let the whole thing simmer for about 30 minutes. Make sure to stir the rice pudding now and then.

Once the rice is tender, remove the saucepan from the heat and discard the bay leaf. You can either serve the rice pudding straight away or cool and refrigerate it first.

To make the compote, cut the vanilla pod in half and scrape out all the seeds. Put the seeds, the pod and all the other ingredients into a saucepan.

Bring to the boil while stirring and simmer for two minutes (or longer, if you like your berries to be more broken up and the alcohol flavour to mellow).

Remove from heat and discard the vanilla pod (or wash and dry it for another time).

Spoon the compote over the rice pudding while still warm or cool as before.

We all no that there is no gain without pain, so here is a shot of my scratched arms to proof that I really went out into the wild to forage for food:

Even my legs did not escape the brambles unscathed, but you will just have to take my word for that!

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