Baked Rice Pudding with Pear Compote

GET
1 l milk
250 g rice, round/brown
1 cup of currants or raisins
Some lemon juice
1 vanilla bean
50 g agave syrup
1 pinch of salt
2 Tsp butter
A pinch of cinnamon

6 ripe pears
agave syrup as required
½ cup filtered water
all organic

DO
Rinse the raisins with hot water, then soak in lemon juice and some water.
Wash the rice, heat the milk and add the rice. When it boils, reduce the heat and simmer for 45 min. Take pot from stove and let it stand covered for 15 min.
Add the remaining butter, salt, scraped-out vanilla and the soaked and drained raisins and stir.
Coat the baking dish with some butter and preheat the oven to 200°
Place mixture in the baking dish, sprinkle with a bit of cinnamon and a some of butter. Cook until the crust is golden. Serve hot or cold with pear compote or apple compote.

No Spotted Dick Please, We're British
In England the Spotted Dick is a pudding containing suet and currants or raisins. But rice pudding is enjoyed by many other cultures around the world, even without the kidney fat.

Pear compote

Peel and core pears. Slice into a cooking pot. Add boiling water. Cover. Bring to boil and simmer for a few minutes. Mix in agave syrup while still warm.

Pear apple pie

Get organic
450g wholemeal spelt flour
1 heaped tbsp honey
2 eggs
125g butter

1 kg ripe yellow pears
500g apples
1 tbsp water
150g almonds

50g icing sugar
pear schnapps

Do
Put flour in a large bowl.
Add honey in the middle and eggs.
Mix together with some flour into a paste.
Cut in butter. Mix.
Knead together into a pastry. Add more flour if sticky, more butter if not smooth. Cool.

Peel pears and apples and core them. Slice into a large pot. Slice the apples very thinly, pears more chunky.
Add water and cook at a medium temperature on the stove with the lid on until soft. Use apples which break down into a mash quickly. The pears should keep their shape. Turn of heat.
Finely grate 100g almonds with a hand grater.
Blanch 50g whole almonds.
Add to the apples. Mix carefully.

Butter a 28 cm round spring form.
Cut pastry into 3 pieces for the pie (2 equal, one smaller).
Roll out one piece for the bottom, make 3 cm sides with the small piece. Save the other piece for the top.
Cover the bottom of the pie shell with greaseproof paper and put a few weights on it (e.g. nuts or metal spoons).
Bake on second shelf for 10 minutes at 190°.
Remove from oven, remove paper and weights.
Fill the pie with the pear-apple mixture.
Roll out the remaining pastry and cover the pie with it.
Press down the edges using a patterned object (e.g. knife tip, lemon zester) to seal the pie.
Bake a further 20 minutes.
Loosen the pie from the bottom and sides of the form with a knife after 30 minutes and remove from form . Cool.
Sieve icing sugar. Mix in pear schnapps until a sticky mass forms. Paint this on the pie with a spoon and smooth over. Use lemon juice as an alternative to alcohol.

This is more a pear pie than an apple pie so it is important to use apples that break down into a mash quickly when cooking them, e.g. rubinola. Pears give off quite a lot of juice when cooking so the ground almonds are necessary to soak it up. The whole almonds give a pleasant surprise.
>> Apple pie

Soya semolina with pear compote

GET
1 cup wholemeal semolina
1 litre non genetically modified soya milk
1 tbsp agave syrup

6 organic brown pears
1 cup water
1 tbsp honey

DO
Bring the soya milk to boiling point in a saucepan. Slowly sprinkle the semolina onto the surface while stirring over a low flame. Stir until it thickens. Continue stirring and cooking for about 15 minutes, adding more liquid to prevent it becoming too thick. Add agave syrup. Pour into a bowl and cover. Cool.

In between stirring, peel the pears and core them. Cut small pieces into a saucepan. Pour boiling water over the peeled pears, cover and boil again. Remove from the heat. After 5 minutes stir in the honey. Cool in a bowl.
Serve together.
Image: Meyers Encyclopedia, Peartree 1905, via Zeno