Arrowroot Custard

St. Vincentian Dessert

ARROWROOT CUSTARD

INGREDIENTS

3 tablespoons arrowroot
1 tablespoon milk (3 1/2 cups more later)
3 1/2 cup milk
2/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 egg yolks

PREPARATION

Add arrowroot and 1 tablespoon milk to small mixing bowl. Mix with fork until paste forms. Add 3 1/2 cups milk to pot. Cook milk on high heat until milk just starts bubbling. STIR FREQUENTLY. Add arrowroot paste from mixing bowl to pot and stir. Remove pot from burner. Turn heat down to low.

(Milk burns quickly. Anybody who comes by and sees you intent on boiling milk will say, “Careful, milk burns in a hurry! They cannot help it. It’s inevitable as falling asleep in the back row at a lecture for theoretical economics.)

Add sugar to pot. Mix with spoon until sugar dissolves. Return pot to burner. Simmer on low heat for 3 minutes. Remove pot from burner. Add in vanilla extract and egg yolks. Mix with whisk or fork until egg yolk blend in completely. Allow to cool. (The heat in the mix will cook the yolks enough during this time.)

Drink as much as you dare before sharing with guests. It’s really tasty.

TIDBITS

1) An anagram for “arrowroot custard” is “Coward roars, ‘Trout!’”

2) Arrowroot is a starch-rich underground creeping rhizome.

3) There was a 1964 movie called The Creeping Terror. Leonard Maltin, the film critic, gave it a “bomb” rating. His Classic Movie Guide said, “Awful horror movie, poor on every conceivable (and inconceivable) level.” I saw it. The monster looks a lot like a giant Denver omelette.

4) If that sort of horror movie can get made, why not The Creeping Rhizome? Just saying. You could have The Underground Creeping Rhizome but that would be way too scary.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.