Milk Pudding from My Mother
The vigorous sound of a whisk beating against the antique porcelain bread bowl my mother used when she made milk pudding will always remind me of her. When I awoke to this clatter from the kitchen downstairs – which was most winter mornings – I always knew what we were having for breakfast.
Milk pudding is a rich, luscious soufflé-like dish that I’m sure many people eat as a dessert. We ate it straight from the oven with stewed fruit, usually apples, and a generous drizzle of heavy cream. Going back for seconds would often make us late for school, but it was so warming and delicious that we couldn’t resist, and what child wouldn’t want dessert for breakfast?
When revisiting some old childhood recipes on my last trip back to Australia, my mother told me how good it made her feel to send us off into the day after a warm breakfast. It really touched me that she had put so much thought into every meal (and dessert) we ate. As we looked through the splattered and yellowed pages of her recipe book, many old favorites jumped out at me: herbed walnut balls baked in béchamel sauce, golden Indian rice casserole, coconut chocolate-chip slice, prune nut yogurt cake, Florentines, date scones, curried pea soup and various crumbles. We decided to make milk pudding because it really had been decades since we had enjoyed a steaming bowl of this childhood favorite together.
It was summer when we pulled the recipe from her old book so we ate the milk pudding with fresh blackberries from the garden, and although we ate it for brunch, we didn’t forget the cream!
I think the addition of ground millet, wheat germ and sunflower seed would make this pudding more interesting – and more like a dish that could pass as a breakfast. Together, these ingredients give a satisfying savory flavor that balances well with the honey, while vigorous whisking of the egg whites keeps the dish light as air.
Amy Chaplin
Amy Chaplin is an Australian living in New York City by way of Amsterdam and London. She grew up in rural New South Wales in a family and community of gourmet vegetarians; cooking and eating meals from her family’s biodynamic garden sparked her passion for fresh ingredients and hand-made food. It can be said that Chaplin’s career as a chef began while making bread with her father and peeling apples for her mother’s crumble. Chaplin’s upbringing also helped inspire her philosophy, that how and what we eat directly affects the world in which we live, as well as our own well-being. To this day the food she cooks features local, organic and plant-based ingredients. After 5 years as executive chef of the world-renowned vegan restaurant Angelica Kitchen, Amy now consults, cooks and teaches privately, her clients include Natalie Portman and Anna Devera Smith, among others. Chaplin finds herself dispensing recipes and answering queries about the health benefits of ingredients on a daily basis. This whole foods chef is always happy to share her passion for the natural culinary arts and loves inspiring others to cook and eat well too.