A Serving Of Indian Pudding

Hmm, how about adding nuts and dried cranberries?

Indian pudding is a dish I tasted for the very first time over the weekend when I tried making a batch. It's a New Englander comfort food, but I grew up elsewhere. Made with cornmeal, it derives from British hasty pudding, a wheat flour porridge cooked on a stove top. The American colonials lacked wheat, but had plenty of cornmeal, which they called Indian meal. So thus, hasty pudding became Indian pudding.

Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

3 cups milk
½ cup cornmeal
½ teaspoon salt
3 eggs
¼ cup brown sugar
¼ cup molasses (Didn't have it. I substituted a squirt of maple syrup.)
1 tablespoon butter
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground ginger
a sprinkle of nutmeg
1/3 cup raisins

Optional: A scoop of vanilla ice cream as a topping.

Directions:

1. Put the ingredients, one by one, into a saucepan. Whisk thoroughly until smooth.
2. Bring to a boil and reduce the heat to simmer for 20 minutes.
3. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish and slide it into a 325 degree F preheated oven.
4. Bake for 1 ½ - 3 hours. Baking for a longer period of time at a low heat turns the grainy porridge into a smooth pudding.

Eat the Indian pudding while warm, topped with the vanilla ice cream, if desired. The pudding, alone, is light and wholesome without too much sugar.

I can't say I dislike it; it's good. However, I like cornbread better, and cornbread takes less time to bake. But now ... like our forebears, I have eaten Indian pudding. To me, it tastes more like hot cereal than dessert.

You often perfer the foods and textures you are accustomed to eating. Perhaps a New Englander likes his Indian pudding as much as I like cornbread. Try it once.

This is James.

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