Magic (Golden rice pudding)

I am alone in my house except for Foxy the cat, asleep on a dining room chair. Caleb and Leo have gone to Boston for the weekend for a videogame conference. I am on my own retreat, at home.

This is the morning to try a new recipe. I chop fresh ginger, assemble spices from my pantry: whole cloves, cardamom seeds, black pepper, and turmeric. I sauté them all in butter. I add rice “middlins,” which are broken rice with the texture of rough grits. I received the middlins in a gift bag on a cooking retreat that I did a few years ago with Vivian Howard at her home in Bald Head Island, North Carolina. The rice and spices bubble in the butter. I add sugar and salt, then milk and water. The liquid seems to overwhelm the rice, but I trust that with patience and time, it will thicken, and it does. The mixture radiates the yellow of daffodils, whose season has just ended.

Before the pudding idea, I’d been making golden milk repeatedly, and it wasn’t quite right. Now a popular drink with a halo of “wellness,” golden milk or haldi doodh is a traditional Ayurvedic remedy of turmeric and warm milk. I drank a mug of it at sunset on a retreat in Mexico in January while facilitating a circle on dream work, and its glow cast a spell on me. But at home, my recipes fell flat, the warmed milk without a café’s steaming wand tasting heavy against the spices. I gave up trying to figure it out.

And then last night, watching Top Chef on the couch, it hit me: rice pudding! It feels like magic. The way the color expands from root to body, looking like the sun. The way the texture morphs from separate solids and liquid into one coagulated whole. The taste of memory and of now. Me and beyond me. Of course the inspiration came when I wasn’t looking for it. Magic always works that way.

Magic, for me, is when I feel grounded on the earth and connected to the sky — accessing something beyond myself and also within. Cooking is everyday magic, what’s good here now that feeds our souls and always has.

I let the rice simmer, seeming soupy until, slowly, grains and milk begin to stick together. Inspired by Alison Roman, who recommends whisking in egg yolks to further thicken the pudding, I turn off the burner and bring the pan over to my sunny countertop. I crack my last duck egg, a gift from Robin at Branchwater Farms distillery, where I found myself on a spontaneous pit stop on my way home from a yoga retreat in Western Massachusetts with my sister a few weeks ago. I whisk the duck yolk into the cooling pudding, gold amplifying gold.

I had done it. I made something new from old traditions, from my travels, gifts and inspiration I received along the way, all simmering as I relaxed into my solo weekend. I ladled pudding into a gold-rimmed bowl of my grandmother’s, sprinkled rose petals and grated fresh cinnamon on top. I tasted magic: something beyond me, something within me, and something very much of this time and place and feeling.

Recipe as feeling: Magic (Golden rice pudding)

Start with what you have.

Simmer patiently.

Summon your gifts.

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Actual recipe

Golden rice pudding

Serves 6

INGREDIENTS
3 tbs. unsalted butter
1 inch fresh ginger, peeled and minced
3 whole cloves
1/2 tsp. cardamom seeds
1 tsp. turmeric powder (or fresh grated turmeric root if you have it)
A few grinds of black pepper
1/2 cup middlins or medium grain white rice
1/3 cup sugar (increase to 1/2 cup if you like a sweeter pudding)
1/4 tsp. salt
3 cups whole milk
2 cups water
Optional: 1 egg yolk (chicken or duck)
Rose petals and cinnamon stick for grating on top

Over medium heat, fry the ginger and spices in butter until fragrant, about a minute. Add the rice, then sugar and salt, stirring everything with a wooden spoon to combine them. Add the milk and water and bring to a simmer, then lower the heat to simmer gently until the rice is cooked, about 25 minutes. At this point, stir occasionally, scraping the bottom and sides of the pan to prevent burning. Keep simmering another 20 minutes until the mixture thickens. It will still be quite soupy but will firm up as it cools.

Turn off the heat and remove the pan from the burner. Whisk in the egg yolk. Ladle the pudding into bowls, and top with rose petals and grated cinnamon (sliced almonds or pistachios would be lovely too). Eat warm or chill in the refrigerator and enjoy cold.