Tori’s Writing Hole

Lately, I’ve been cooking with ingredients that are not typical. For instance, I recently had a hankering (yes, hankering!) for rice pudding. I had some organic arborio rice (creamy, short-grained, perfect for making a consistently textured pudding), organic cinnamon, raw sugar… I took out all of these ingredients and plunked them on the counter. Unfortunately, as I went through the ingredient list (from a recipe I found online - I won’t post it here as I didn’t think much of it) I realized I didn’t have an essential ingredient: milk. Since J is lactose intolerant, she drinks soy milk, and me and the hubby were trying to drink rice milk. So, with no moo juice currently residing in our fridge, I tried making rice pudding with vanilla Rice Dream rice milk. Not recommended. While the flavor was pretty nice (I do love vanilla), there was not enough fat in the rice milk to give the pudding a dreamy, delicious, fattening taste.

I had the same problem a few days later, when I went to make some yummy tilapia fillets for dinner. I usually poach tilapia in a garlic/dill/white wine mixture, after drizzling the fish with a bit of olive oil. But I didn’t have white wine - just champagne. That’s right, champagne. So I tried it as a substitution - this one worked! The sweetness of champagne, mixed with the firm flesh of the tilapia and a bit of extra salt, really did seem to do the trick.

The moral of this cooking story? Sometimes substitutions work, sometimes they’re an utter failure. If you’re not opposed to throwing out your inedible mistakes, then go for the subs - if you are more of a safety nut, be sure to check all your ingredients before beginning to prepare a dish!

Tags: cooking, rice, pudding, tilapia, champagne

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