Vegan rice pudding

Cardamom growing on one of the spice plantations in Munnar.Remember that article about preserving family recipes my friend Cheryl Tan wrote for the WaPo a few months ago?

For years, Camille DeAngelis, author of "Petty Magic," resisted asking her grandmother and mother for their recipes for meatloaf, apple pie or pumpkin soup, for example, because of "the simple fact that no dish I put together will taste as good as my grandmother's version." Then, earlier this year, she got her grandmother's zucchini souffle recipe and tried it out in her kitchen. "Apparently my grandmother has a great deal more patience than I do. The recipe calls for grated zucchini and onion, but after only a few strokes I gave up and took out the food processor," DeAngelis says.

"The importance, for me," she adds, "lies not so much in the preservation of the recipes themselves as in the memories of family dinners they evoke. Someday I want my children to know their great-grandmothers through the dishes they made."

Since then I've been wanting to share Grandmom Kass's rice pudding recipe, but I'm only now getting around to testing it. This dessert will end up tasting even less like the original now that I'm vegan, but maybe when I make this it can remind me of my grandparents and that beyond-delicious thimbleful of cardamom rice pudding I had in Madurai.

So here's my vegan version. It's easy-peasy and excellent comfort food—the way the cardamom mingles with the vanilla is totally magical.

2/3 cup uncooked white rice (I used 'jasmati')1/3 cup raw sugar1/3 cup raisins4½ cups coconut milk1 teaspoon vanilla6 cardamom pods

Preheat oven to 325º. Mix all ingredients in a large casserole dish. Bake for an hour and fifteen minutes, stirring regularly and taste-testing for sweetness once the rice has softened. Remove cardamom pods and serve hot or cold. Yields 6-8 servings.Some notes:

• You can add more raisins, but it might be a good idea to add more milk too, since they really suck it up while they're cooking.
• Of course you can skip the cardamom pods, or use ground cardamom, but it really does make the dish. (I can't emphasize this enough, actually. Magical. For reals.)
• There's no need to cover the dish with foil (I wasn't sure, so I called my grandmother to check).

Now if only that zucchini soufflé were so easy to veganize! (I picked up a box of egg replacer but I haven't used it yet, so I'm still skeptical.)