For ➑flaky pie crust dough (pâte brisée) or pâte levée*
75 cl milk
100 g (dessert) rice
75 g sugar (with 2 small bags of vanilla sugar when vanilla bean is not available)
vanilla bean
10 g butter
2 eggs
100 g almonds**
saffron***
powder sugar
Melt the butter in a pan. Add the rice and mix. Scrape the vanilla bean. Add with the sugar and milk, and stir well. Slowly simmer over low heat until the milk is almost completely absorbed. Remove from heat. Butter a pie form. Line the pan with the dough.
Preheat the oven to 200°C. Mix the almond powder and the 2 eggs with the rice. (Add saffron for a yellow colour.***) Pour the rice into the shape, and bake for 30 to 40 m.
When cold, sprinkle the tart with powder sugar and serve.
Preheat the oven to 200°C. Mix the almond powder and the 2 eggs with the rice. (Add saffron for a yellow colour.***) Pour the rice into the shape, and bake for 30 to 40 m.
When cold, sprinkle the tart with powder sugar and serve.
*Or the crustier pâte feuilleté. You could use ready-made dough.
**Replace the almonds with crushed macarons for the Verviers version. (Belgian macaroons differ from the colourful French, being a nutty cookie, it is a speciality of Verviers.)
***Optional.
Rijsttaart or tarte au riz is a traditional Belgian tart, always made with a rice & milk mixture and some dough (a pâte brisée, or a pâte feuilletée, puff pastry dough, will do).
The base is the sweet rice & milk mixture, already known in Baghdad, and probably brought to the Low Lands by the Spanish in the 16th century. The rather firm rice pudding features on the 1567 Pieter Brueghel painting of a wedding as a not very common treat, with expensive products such as saffron, rice and sugar. In popular lore, heaven was depicted as a place where one would eat rice pudding every day. The rice pie was probably invented by bakers as an easier to handle variant to the rice pudding in plates. It was called 'blanke doreye', meaning 'gilded white', as the pie turned golden in the oven, with the rice being white. 'Doreye' is still the name of the Liège and the Verviers rice pies.Read the related 'witte rijstpap' (white rice pudding) recipe.
