Rice Pudding with Coconut Milk & Raspberry Jam

"Life is a jest; and all things show it
I thought so once; but now I know it".  John Gay, My Own Epitaph.

So after my foray into chicken satay, I'm left with an opened tin of coconut milk.  I decant it into an old jam jar and it looks disconcertingly like dirty white spirit in the fridge.  If I leave it there a few days, my husband will throw it away.  While my kids are still finishing off their chicken satay, I start making rice pudding.  While I'm pouring out the milk, I suddenly realise that the coconut milk and rice pudding could be a marriage from heaven. 

Now making home made rice pudding, when it's left festering at the bottom of the oven for a couple of hours, is lovely.  But most of my deserts are done on the spur of the moment in response to hungry appetites so this isn't an option.  Thankfully a few years ago my Mum introduced me to flaked pudding rice.  It has cooking instructions on the packet; either in the oven for 1.5-2 hours or on the hob for 6-8 mins!  Yes, 6-8 minutes!!  Ok, so you don't get to enjoy the skin, but that often seems to divide people anyway.  OK, so there is quite a bit of stirring - but I added the coconut milk towards the end to loosen the pudding that was thickening a little too much and again at the end to help cool in down quickly for impatience children.  They loved it and ate it with a blob of raspberry jam.  Incidentally, everything "tastes like jam" at the moment, according to my 2 year old or tastes "like tractor".  For some unknown reason we haven't had jam in the house for a couple of months.  The children don't usually eat jam, but due to the sudden novelty, they can't get enough of it and it's getting lots of requests.

Chicken Satay & Noodles

"Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them" -  Shakespeare's Othello

The kids often struggle to eat meat and can be a little funny about the texture of chicken.  I mixed a tablespoon of peanut butter with some coconut milk and lemon juice and chopped chicken breast into cubes and marinated it in the satay sauce then grilled the chicken.  Served on bamboo sticks 'kebab style' with tinned pineapple and fresh cucumber quarters on a bed of sticky noodles.  The kids loved the novelty of pulling the morsels of the sticks (although 2 year old did require some supervision as he tried to sword swallow his bamboo stick at one point!).  What to do now with the rest of the coconut milk?