Coconut Rice Pudding

Rice pudding isn't a beautiful dish, but it's warm and comforting and easy to make. We eat rice at least every other day in our Chinese household, so leftover short grain rice makes a fairly regular appearance. Instead of eating stale leftover rice, sometimes it's nice to make an easy dessert. Today, I added a coconut twist to the pudding and got some very fragrant results.

For 6-8 servings

• 2 cups cooked short grain rice
• 3 cups milk. Whole will make the most creamy pudding, but I used nonfat and it was just fine. The point was to make an easy dessert and use up leftovers, not to buy ingredients to make a special dessert. 
• 1/3 cup sugar, plus more to taste
• 2 pinches salt (or a little more. I think 1/4 teaspoon would be fine)
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup large coconut flakes
• a little dark rum

Combine the rice, milk, sugar, salt, vanilla, and coconut flakes in a small, heavy-bottomed saucepan. Break up the rice and combine the ingredients while heating the milk to a simmer. Turn the heat down as low as it will go, and cover the pot. Cook for 40 minutes, stirring often to keep the milk from burning. When the rice has absorbed almost all of the milk, turn off the heat. Serve hot or cold with a drizzle of dark rum. 

You can also sprinkle some cinnamon or a little sugar on top, but be careful with the sugar. Less is more when it comes to sugar; rice pudding is a very rich dessert and if it starts off sugary tasting you can tire of it very quickly. The toppings possibilities are endless when it comes to rice pudding. Treat it like oatmeal and you'll be able to think of dozens of ways to use up leftover rice. But do try the coconut. It reminded me a little of Southeast Asian coconut desserts, but was much easier to prepare. Next time, I'm going to try substituting milk with light coconut milk.