Rice pudding, a la Alton Brown

I've had this super craving for rice pudding lately, but it seems ridiculous to spend like $4 for a tiny tub of it at the grocery store when it will last half a blink. Plus, I need new stuff to cook, right?

So I dug around on foodnetwork.com for the perfect first rice pudding recipe, and of course went straight for Alton Brown. For those of you who haven't seen his show, he's the quintessential scientist who channels his geekiness into cooking. If you ever want to know the ins and outs of cheesecake, butter, the perfect turkey, etc. he's the guy to look to. And Alton never does a recipe halfway, so naturally his rice pudding is Indian rice pudding, cardamom and all.

Total cooking time: about 30 minutes.
Total shopping time to find cardamom and coconut milk in Sunnyside, NY: um, 3 days?? It's like mission impossible to get spices in this neighborhood. I finally found cardamom at this little spice counter at the Grand Central Market. Yes, there's a food market inside Grand Central. What won't New Yorkers come up with to save a few minutes?

Final product: so worth the hunt for ingredients! I added a little nutmeg and cinnamon for my own flavor. Yum! So good, in fact, that I may have to make another batch for Soup Night. But that's a whole different blog...