I adore rice pudding. From the vanilla laden stodge in a can which I will eat cold, to the snackpots, and through to the very best baked and sugared topped-with-a-baked-skin that Nans make, I will eat them all and go back for more.

It’s nursery food I suppose, but for me it’s definitely a comfort food in that I would always get fed a milk pudding if I’d not been well. It’s recovery food. If your tummy is feeling all stretched and worn, or your throat has been raspy and full of raw tickle, then a rice, macaroni, tapioca or even sago pudding just slips down easily. 

One day recently I was at home, and full of vertigo with wobbly legs, so I desperately wanted comfort food. I very carefully made this for my tea, and I think it took roughly 15 minutes beginning to end.

I had no pudding rice, but I did have the ever fragrant Basmati, and that morning I’d watched the veritable television hug that was Nigel Slater’s Middle East, so I knew what I needed.

When I realised I didn’t have much milk (I needed to stretch it out in order to leave some to make tea with) I used half evaporated coconut milk and half milk. I suppose you could do half milk and half water, but it wouldn’t have that same richness.

I more or less halved the recipe that was on the BBC website, and adjusted the fruit to what I had.

75g basmati rice

125ml evaporated coconut milk

125ml full-fat milk

1 tbsp golden caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla paste

8 dried apricots, chopped

2 tbs sultanas

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp Spice Sanctuary Sweet Delights mix (you really do not need much)

1 tsp rosewater

1 tsp orange blossom water

12g shelled pistachios, roughly chopped

1 tbs toasted coconut curls

A few food-grade rose petals

Put the rice in a medium-sized, heavy-based pan, and add in the milks, sugar and vanilla.

Bring to the boil over a medium heat, then reduce the heat until the milk is bubbling gently.

Stir in the cinnamon, Sweet Delight, sultanas and apricots.

Allow to simmer for 25 minutes, or until the rice is tender, giving it the occasional stir.

If it needs more liquid, just add more coconut milk.

Serve piled with the  finely chopped pistachios and coconut curls, plus a few rose petals if you wish. I did wish, as I wanted it to look as pretty as I wasn’t feeling.

That worked as both lunch and dinner for me, and I fell asleep still extremely dizzy, but very happy.