Halwat el Ruz

Halwat el ruz — rice pudding — is one of the simplest Moroccan sweets, made with rice, milk, sugar and orange-blossom water. It belongs to the ancient family of milk-and-grain puddings that stretches across the entire Mediterranean and the Arab world, from the Catalan arros amb llet to the Indian kheer. In Morocco, it is served chilled and dusted with cinnamon, and it appears most often during Ramadan and at family dinners. The rice is cooked directly in the milk, not pre-cooked, so it releases its starch into the liquid and thickens it naturally.

Creamy, cool and gently sweet, with the floral note of orange-blossom water and the warm dust of cinnamon; the almonds add a soft crunch. Simple, soothing and clean.

The rice thickens the milk by starch gelatinization: as the grains cook, their starches swell and burst, releasing amylose and amylopectin into the surrounding liquid, which thickens into a pudding. This is the same chemistry that thickens risotto. The orange-blossom water is added off the heat, after the pudding is removed from the stove, because its aromatic esters are volatile and would evaporate if boiled. The pudding sets further as it chills, because the rice starch retrogrades, forming a firmer gel at cold temperatures.