Don't Sweat the Aubergine

liquid while baking, anyway.
RICE PUDDING
    This is a Heston Blumenthal recipe – rice pudding meets risotto. I’ve reduced the quantity of milk he gives, because I didn’t need so much. Perhaps your rice will absorb more; you can add it during cooking.
----
HOW TO MAKE IT
----
    For 6
    600ml milk
    1 vanilla pod, or 2 tsp vanilla essence
    135g arborio or carnaroli rice
    110g caster sugar
    1 pinch nutmeg
    150ml double cream
    2 egg yolks
    Split the vanilla pod lengthways; put it, with scraped-out seeds, in the milk, bring the milk to a simmer, cover, and turn off the heat. Leave for 20 minutes.
    If you don’t want the seeds, sieve the milk into another pan.
    Bring a pan of water to the boil, throw in the rice, bring back to the boil, simmer for 3 minutes, and drain. 1
    Add the sugar and nutmeg to the milk, and return to a simmer (if you’re using vanilla essence, you’ll have started here). Add the rice and simmer it, stirring. It should take 20 to 30 minutes to become tender.
    If the rice is still drowned in liquid, strain some milk into another pan and simmer it until it reduces, before returning it to the main dish. A certain amount of runniness is fine, particularly if you’re going to serve the pudding cold: it will thicken as it cools.
    Add the double cream; cook for a couple of minutes longer. Remove from the heat, add the egg yolks, and stir. Blumenthal tells you to stir the pudding for 3 minutes; but you can probably get away with being a little less assiduous.
    Serve hot or cold.
----
WHY YOU DO IT
----
    1 • Blanching the rice . To blanch is to part-cook something in boiling water. In this case, you do it to lessen the starchiness of the rice.
LEMON SURPRISE PUDDING
    This is a lemony sponge on top of a lemony custard. Nigel Slater, with credit to Margaret Costa’s classic
Four Seasons Cookery Book
, reproduces it in
Real Cooking
, but includes an egg too few and a lemon too many for my taste: I find the custard too thin, and sharp.
    In
Appetite
, he offers an updated version, with orange and lemon, and gives the same number of eggs but less milk and flour.
    The following recipe is halfway between the two.
----
HOW TO MAKE IT
----
    For 6
    100g butter
    175g caster sugar
    Yolks of 5 (or 6, for a thicker custard) eggs, whites of 4 1
    2 lemons – zest and juice 2
    500ml milk
    50g plain flour
    Cream the butter and sugar. 3 Beat in the egg yolks, and add the lemon zest and juice. The mixture won’t look too good, but don’t worry: it’s going to look even worse in a minute. Pour in the milk, and gradually whisk in the flour (see the batter recipe, here ).
    Beat the egg whites with a balloon whisk – use an electric beater if you prefer ( see here ) until you can make snowy peaks with them. 4 Fold them gently into the batter. Pour the mixture into a buttered oven dish; it should come halfway up the sides.
    Put the dish into a roasting pan or other vessel, and pour in hot water to come halfway up the sides of the pudding dish (see The bain-marie, here ). Bake in a gas mark 4/180°C oven for about 50 minutes, or until the sponge is golden and, well, spongy.
----
VARIATIONS
----
    You could try an orange surprise pudding, with the zest and juice of 2 oranges; or use 1 orange and 1 lemon.
----
HOW YOU DO IT
----
    1 • Separating . See point 5, here .
    2 • Zesting . See point 9, here .
    3 • Creaming . See point 3, here .
    4 • Whisking . See point 6, here .
PANNA COTTA (POSH BLANCMANGE)
----
HOW TO MAKE IT
----
    For 6
    3 leaves gelatine, or 3 tsp powdered gelatine 1
    450ml double cream
    150ml milk
    60g caster sugar
    2 vanilla pods or 1 tsp vanilla essence
    Put the gelatine (leaves or powder) in a small saucepan, and sprinkle over just enough water to soak it. Leave for 10 minutes.
    Meanwhile, pour the cream and milk into a small saucepan, and add the sugar. Split the vanilla pods from end to end, scrape the seeds into the milk and cream, and throw in the pods as well; or simply add the vanilla essence. Bring the pan to a simmer, and allow the contents to bubble gently for 5 minutes.
    Pour the cream and milk mixture – through a sieve if it contains vanilla pods and seeds – into a jug.
    Put the saucepan with the gelatine on to a ring on the hob at its lowest setting. As soon as the gelatine turns watery, take it off the hob and stir until it completely dissolves – overheating disables its thickening qualities. (Another way with leaf gelatine is to soak it in cold water for 5 minutes, squeeze it