Indian Pudding (Gluten Free)

Indian pudding is an old New England recipe. When the early colonists landed here, they brought with them a fondness for a dish called hasty pudding, which was wheat flour boiled in water or milk until it thickened into porridge. But, alas, wheat did not grow very well in New England, so the colonists, learning from the Indians, used corn meal. They gradually began to add molasses, spices and milk as life and cuisine became more civilized.
This Indian pudding tastes a lot like pumpkin pie. After all, it has all the same spices. I made it for dinner yesterday evening when the young marrieds came to dinner. We had corned beef and cabbage as a salute to Saint Patrick's Day, and because everyone loves corned beef and cabbage. They really loved it. I was looking forward to corned beef sandwiches for lunch, but it was not to be. My son handed me the last scrap of meat, about the size of a slice of American cheese.
I reminded my son that we had made Indian pudding 27 years ago, when he was four. He didn't remember. I won't tell you what he said it looked like. Use your imagination about something a four year old boy would say. We had it with vanilla ice cream in the living room around what might well be the last fire of the season. We had tried to have a fire two weeks ago, at the creamed lobster dinner. It turned out, although we opened the damper we knew about, there was another one that the heat auditors had closed. Smoke spewed everywhere, and the guests had to retreat to the addition. This time, both dampers were open, and we sat around the fire talking and throwing logs on.
The only tricky thing about Indian pudding is putting the corn meal on gradually. You just want to float a teaspoon at a time on top of the boiling milk. If you put too much on at one time, corn meal clumps up. So sprinkle, stir, sprinkle, stir. Don't dump. Because my son asked to wait for dessert, ours was not as moist as it should have been, but it was still good. It is also possible that I let the corn meal mush thicken too much before I stopped cooking it. I cooked it until it was pulling away from the side of the pot.

Indian Pudding

4 cups milk
1 cup yellow corn meal
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/3 cup finely minced suet (I left this out. It makes food fatty and greasy tasting.)
1/2 cup sugar
2/3 cup light molasses
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon allspice
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
vanilla ice cream

1. Bring the milk to a boil, and add the corn meal gradually, beating vigorously with a wire whisk. When mixture starts to thicken, set it aside to cool.
2. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
3. When the mixture is nearly cool, stir in the remaining ingredients except the ice cream and mix well.
4. Pour into a buttered baking dish. Bake two hours. Serve piping hot, with vanilla ice cream on top. Makes ten to one dozen servings.

Baked Custard (Gluten Free)

Michaela, Bob's old boss, came to dinner Wednesday night. We had corned  beef and  Brussels sprouts for dinner, so I was looking for something light  and easy, not to say gluten free, for dessert. It being the night  before Thanksgiving, it  did not seem like the time for pies.
 I have to say, baked custard is sort of a namby-pamby dessert. It doesn't have much flavor. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was known as invalid food. Mothers fed it to sick children.
The recipe calls for scalded milk. You scald milk  by heating it slowly, until a ring of tiny bubbles form around the side of the pan. The website  thekitchn.com,  says scalding milk "infuses it with flavor," so the cook can scald milk with vanilla beans, mint leaves or other herbs and spices. Scalding also speeds up the cooking process. If you run across a bread recipe that tells you to scald the milk, you should follow the directions, as scalding milk deactivates the whey proteins in the milk, which can keep the dough from rising properly. (Make sure the milk has cooled somewhat, otherwise when you mix it into the eggs, they will cook.
  I asked Bob to bring home some raspberries, and he inventively made a raspberry sauce in the blender. What you see in the picture is the raspberry sauce. Custard is a very pale yellow.   The cooking time seemed to be off. Hewitt says twenty-five to thirty minutes. It seemed more like 40  to 50 minutes before it solidified.

Baked Custard

3 eggs, lightly beaten
1/3 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups milk, scalded
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Beat the eggs with the sugar, salt and vanilla. Stir in the milk. (Make sure it has a chance to cool.) Pour into a baking dish or casserole that has been greased on the bottom. Sprinkle with the nutmeg. Set baking dish or casserole in a pan of hot water and bake twenty-five to thirty minutes, or until a knife inserted in custard comes out clean. Makes four servings.