Cranberry Rice Pudding (Serves 2)

This was not like any rice pudding I have ever had before, it was runny and watery. the taste was at best OK...

Sitting down, exhausted, looking out at Thousand Island lakes and Banner Peak as the sun was setting, and being handed a warm bowl of this rice pudding made our trip unforgettable. I LOVE the different style rice pudding than what "America" deems is rice pudding. The world has so many amazing cuisines to offer and I'm so glad we got to experience that at 10,000 feet!

My experience was that 12 ounces of water made it more like a soup than a pudding. So I strained each bite with my spoon against the bowl and I could tell it would have been a pretty good pudding. However both my wife and I found the brown Basmati rice to be rather crunchy. She was fine with it because she likes brown rice. I just let it sit for a while longer to try to get more of a pudding texture but I didn't. I might sound like a spoiled Westerner, but a version of this with long grain, unbleached white rice would be great. What if you added some Tapioca to it to make it more creamy?

I found the water amount recommended was a bit too much. Turned this into more of a rice soup which wasn't really easy to eat. The flavor would have been great in my opinion if there were not cloves in it. They really overpowered the other spices and just kind of screamed Thankgiving. Some people may like it, but the flavor of this just isn't for me.

Made this rice pudding, and could not eat it. 10oz (1.25 cups) of water was WAY too much - it ended up being a soup with rice floating in it. And 3 minutes (heck, even 5 mins) Is way too short a cook time. The rice was crunchy and uncooked, even after 5 minutes. Last, the taste: all I got was super-sweet Crabtree and Evelyn soap with a touch of anise/licorice flavor. All in all, this was an edible crunchy rice soup that had to be packed out and tossed. Bummer.