Risalamande - Rice Pudding with Almands and Cherry Sauce

Here's a typical Danish Christmas dessert called risalamande. I's a rice pudding mixed with whipped cream, almonds and served with a warm cherry sauce. It just happens to be red and white like the Danish flag. According to tradition, all the almonds except one are chopped. The person who finds the whole amond then gets a prize of some kind.
Ingredients (for 6 people):

80g of risotto rice
600ml full fat milk
200ml water
1 pod of fresh vanilla
100g almonds
400ml whipping cream
Sugar to taste
Cherry Sauce:
1/4 kg fresh cherries
1 tbsp sugar
1 cup of water
Fresh lemon juice
1 tbsp maizena

You need to make the rice pudding in advance as it needs to be cold. Make it the day before. Pour the rice and milk into a pot with a thick base. If the base is too thin you will burn the rice.

Scrape the seeds out of the vanilla pod and throw them with the pod itself into the milk. Bring it slowly to a boil. Cover with lid and boil slowly for around 50 minutes, and REMEMBER to stir ocasionally or it will burn. Especially towards the end.

After cooking, let it cool down, remove vanilla pod and place it in the fridge until the next day.

Now, to make the sauce, de-pit the cherries by cutting a circle around the centre, twist and remove pit.

Add the sugar and water and let it simmer slowly for 20 minutes until the berries are soft.

Squeeze some lemon in to the sauce.

Ad the maizena and stir. This will thicken the sauce.

Chop the almonds coarsely, add to the rice pudding. Don't forget to leave one almond whole and buy a present for the finder.

Whip the cream.

Stir in the rice pudding and almonds.

Add sugar to taste.

Pour the warm cherry sauce over the cold risalamande. Merry Christmas.