Mango and Vanilla Rice Pudding Tarts

Sunshine for a summery weekend

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Hello, Happy Friday!

Forgive me if I am a little distracted this week; as I write this, the worktop for the new kitchen is being installed, and the hob is being lifted into position. The excitement for an almost completed kitchen that I can actually bake in is making me giddy with anticipation. After months and months of building works, baking in a temporary kitchen, and washing up in the bath, I cannot properly express how happy it will make me to actually bake something in the kitchen I have been dreaming of for years. I cannot wait!

I initially had other plans for this week's recipe, but when I noticed my local mango shop (yes, that's a real thing) got a fresh delivery of the golden orbs, a new idea popped into my head that I jumped on immediately. The idea was to make a super flaky tart crust and fill it with a mixture of vanilla-infused rice pudding and top it with fresh mango and garnish it with a whisper of whipped cream and a light dusting of chocolate. Whilst rice pudding might elicit memories of cosy winter nights, I am a big fan of chilled rice pudding, and to me that is a perfect summertime food.

The rice pudding is incredibly simple, flavoured with nothing other than vanilla. But, talking of vanilla, I did have the luxury of some extra special beans on hand which I could use to make this dish. I am currently working on something around vanilla and had a selection of pods of different origins, and I had half a Mexican vanilla pod that needed using. The vanilla was intense and intoxicating, with a very heady aroma that was just so delicious – the most intense vanilla I have ever used. The specific variety of vanilla was wild ‘pompona vanilla’ the only vanilla in the world that is pollinated naturally by bees. Almost all of the vanilla you use is pollinated by hand (more on that soon), but wild pompano vanilla, possibly the original species of vanilla, is still pollinated by bees – something that just doesn’t happen with other species of vanilla. The flavour imparted by these beans is incredible – the same creamy, rich flavour you expect from any vanilla but with more complexity, with an almost fruity flavour. Of course you can use the same beans as I used, should you want, but the pudding can be made a variety of ways: with a vanilla pod, with bean paste or just with extract.

For the mango, I stopped short of cooking the fruit. I wanted it to taste as fresh as possible, so instead of adding any sugar, I simply diced the fruit and tossed it with just a very small amount of lime juice, but not enough to really make it taste acidic. For the pastry, I made my go-to flaky pastry, a beautiful foil to all of the other flavours and textures happening in this dish. To garnish, I finished the tarts with a small amount of whipped cream and a little grating of chocolate.