pudding of the gods

Have we talked about my obsession with bread pudding?

It started just last summer when out to dinner with my Dad in my neighborhood. I ordered a banana variety on a lark and fell wildly in love. There was passion and intrigue, surprise and wonder. On some level, this disconcerted me. I had long hated--I mean really loathed--all pudding. My brother was obsessed with those chemical-laden packets of Jell-o chocolate pudding when we were young. But I found it disgusting; after all, anything that develops a film freaks me out. Rice pudding is equally inedible, all little grains surrounded in too sweet stew. It's just not for me. But bread pudding: that's the real deal. And so over the last six months, I've become a connoisseur of sorts.

Until last night, the best bread pudding I've found is a pecan caramel glazed variety that is dangerously available right across the street from my apartment. But at $7 a serving, I've only been really tempted twice. A block away, and at the sight of my pudding deflowerment, is the banana-based one. It's dense and not too sweet, but too dry for any sustained longings. Another block from there is a nutmeg walnut one, but it's home is a very bourgie eatery, the kind of place where the peasant dessert comes on a square porcelain block and you feel guilty if it's all that you order. You find yourself ordering a $12 dirty martini and then it doesn't even matter what's in the pudding because you can't taste it.

Anyway, for all my love, I had never attempted a batch myself. It seemed too dangerous. 8 servings, maybe 10, a whole pan full of desire. I couldn't bring myself to do it, afraid what I'd become if I started whipping it up. And what if I memorized the recipe? I'd be a goner. Too rotund to get out my apartment door, let alone squeeze myself into a summer's gown. But yesterday, on a cold Kentucky evening when we had plans to host J's department head and wife, I decide that it was time. The latest Cook's Illustrated confirmed my suspicion. "Perfect bread pudding" it announced on the cover. With it's 9 yolks and 2 and a half cups of heavy cream, a few of dark rum-soaked raisins, and a bourbon-brown sugar sauce...well, perfect doesn't really approximate it. Then again, no adjectives will do the trick because it was contradictory in its perfection: light and spongy, but also full-bodied, saturated with flavor. It had a crisp top that foiled a custardy brilliance below. I think it's fair to say that it out-shined everything else. Don't tell him I said so, but I think J was a little jealous of my work.

Buy the magazine. Make the bread pudding. You'll never be the same. Neither will your middle.