After nearly two weeks of bad planning, forgetfulness, pesky sadnesses and rhinovirii, I have finally got my act together: the evening workout has been worked out, dinner has been eaten, smartalecky and lively conversation has been made with one's mate, an hour of interesting television has been watched, and by 9 p.m. I am at the stove, mixing together milk, a little salt and the last 1/2 cup of tapioca in the Bascombs box. A very dear friend and her mother are not getting enough tapioca in their diets, and I have offered to help correct this. Eggs and sugar, beaten together, wait on the table, as does a bottle of two-fold vanilla, which is supposed to be economical; since it's double-strength, you can use half of what your recipe requires. That's the idea, anyway. I have never been one for half-measures, figuratively or literally. There will be plenty of vanilla in this pudding.
For something from such humble beginnings, tapioca, or at least tapioca pudding, inspires strong reactions: those who like it love it, those who don't like it loath it. I'm sure there is someone out there who can take it or leave it, but I've yet to meet that someone. Myself, I love it, and I am lucky enough to be married to someone who loves it even more than I do. When he gets a craving for it, and we have no tapioca pudding fixings in the house, Lloyd will bring home tubs of Kozy Shack tapioca. The first time he brought it home, I was set to read him the riot act until I read the ingredient list: milk, tapioca, sugar, eggs, pure vanilla extract. No preservatives. Keep it in the fridge long enough and it *will* go off. It is best that I not explain how I know this. Pudding mixes are verboten in this house, but Kozy Shack is welcome.
Even as I share my mentors' antipathy toward most back-of-the-box recipes -- too many of them are written by non-cooks, not enough of them are written by cooks -- I still find myself referring to the Bascomb's box. The recipe on the box suggests that tapioca is a doddle to make, and of course it is, particularly since I am using small-pearl tapioca, which does not require soaking as the larger pearls do. According to the package directions, you put the milk (3 cups), tapioca (1/2 cup) and salt (pinch) into a 2-quart saucepan over heat; you stir constantly until it boils; once it boils, you turn the heat down as low as it will possibly go and cook the tapioca for two minutes; you then beat your eggs (2) and sugar (1/2 cup) together; you add a little of the hot milk mix to the eggs and sugar to temper them, so as not to create instant sweet scrambled eggs; you return the tempered eggs back to the saucepan, you put it back on over the lowest possible heat and cook for 2 minutes further; you take the pudding off the heat, let it cool and stir in some vanilla extract (to taste). My inclination is always to gild the lily, to enrich everything, but I remember, ruefully, the last time I did this. In lieu of two eggs, I used four egg yolks, and I substituted the seeds from a whole vanilla bean for the extract. It is, roughly, the formula I use when I make creme anglaise, the custard sauce that is the foundation of some of my favorite ice creams. I would have thought that the resulting tapioca would be perfect, but I did not love it: it was bright yellow, too thick, the egg too forward. That was the day I learned that "overegging the pudding" was not just a figure of speech. Lloyd loved it, though, and suggested that maybe I was being too harsh. He might be right, but I'm not about to try that tonight, not with pudding for friends. We'll follow the box.
Except...how many times do I need to learn the lesson about stoves and ovens being variable in temperature, and if you get a recipe that tells you to stir something for X amount of minutes, your caution sensors should go off? I did not trust my own instincts. I wanted to get this right. Usually when I cook custards, I am a jackrabbit cook. I like to take a custard to the last possible point before it boils. It's a tricky and probably foolhardy thing to do: all it takes is one blup and your custard is boiling, it's scrambled eggs, you're at the point of no return, all because you didn't pull it off the fire and strain it 30 seconds ago, you foolish thing, you. To me, though, the greater sin is in undercooking. Eggs and starches do their best work under heat; if you don't give them enough heat, they will not achieve optimum thickness. Many is the time I stand over a creme anglaise or a lemon curd, thinking no, not yet...no...no...now. Nownownow! Tonight is not the night for that. Milk and tapioca are boiled, eggs are tempered, the whole thing is put together and cooked for three minutes on the nose. It still looks soupy, but it will thicken on cooling, this I know. Into the bowl goes the tapioca; back to the living room I go.
Fifteen minutes later, I go back to the kitchen to give the pudding a stir. It is still soup. The bowl is much cooler, but what we have is less a custard than a syllabub. This is what comes from not trusting my own impulses. Those impulses have taken a beating in recent months, as some of the chances I've taken, the risks I've calculated, have not worked in my favor. Tonight, though, at least on this small scale, I know that I'm right. I know that the tapioca has to go back to the stove. Four minutes later, it all comes together; I feel the telltale thickening of the custard, the one that says that the pudding is on the verge of boiling. Back into the bowl it goes, and this time I know we really have something here. A little vanilla, a little more, a little more, and now it's ready to be decanted and stored snugly in the fridge. We're done.