August 9th is National Rice Pudding Day. Here are five ways to raise your rice pudding recipe to fine-restaurant status.

Try all of them to decide what you think makes the best rice pudding recipe. And as a bonus, check out the rice pudding recipes below.

1. Soak the raisins in Armagnac, Grand Marnier, or other favorite liqueur.

2. Think beyond raisins: Create a medley of small dried fruits that includes raisins as well as dried blueberries, cherries, cranberries, currants and sultanas (golden raisins).

3. Try a different rice such as elegant, long-grained basmati and jasmine or short, oval arborio (used for risotto).

4. Use coconut milk with black rice or red rice for a Thai rice pudding.

5. Serve the pudding in a Martini glass or other glam dessert dish.

Cold and creamy, rice pudding is fine hot-weather fare and great year-round comfort food.

You can order great rice pudding online from Rice To Riches.
 
 
MORE RICE PUDDING RECIPES

 
 
FOOD HISTORY

[2] A sophisticated addition: Soak the raisins in orange liqueur (photo © South Beach Liquor Store).

In the days before air conditioning, it wasn’t easy to sell fine chocolates in the summer. Cocoa butter, one of the major components of chocolate (the one that provides the creamy, luscious mouthfeel), melts at 93.4°F to 98°F.

Hot weather can make a mess of a chocolatier’s hard work.

To beat the heat, many chocolatiers made special “summer chocolates” out of what consumers called “white chocolate,” but was actually a product called confectionery coating, a product that substitutes vegetable oil for the cocoa butter.

Confectionery coating is melt-resistant, but without the cocoa butter it doesn’t taste like chocolate—in fact, if you have a good palate, it may not taste good to you at all. Some chocolatiers still use it. It’s easier to work with and it’s much less expensive than real chocolate.

If you like milk chocolate but don’t like white chocolate, chances are you may have been eating confectionery coating instead of the real deal.

A beguiling summer bonbon, the Blood Orange Creamsicle (photo © Bespoke Chocolates [now closed]).

One of our favorite pieces is this Blood Orange “Creamsicle” Bonbon from Bespoke Chocolates: a creamy, top-quality white chocolate shell with a tart-sweet blood orange ganache.

It’s available for a limited time only, so don’t dawdle. But the company’s spectacular Pretzel-Covered Sea-Salted Caramel, which gets our vote for one of the top 10 bonbons in America, is available year-round. Order as many as you can afford.

Pass the bagels! Check out the whole grain, organic bagels from French Meadow Bakery, a NIBBLE Top Pick Of The Week. They deliver two servings of whole grains per bagel, are only 260 calories (regular bagels can be twice that and more)…and are delicious. This is the Sprouted Healthy Hemp Bagel, with a garnish of fresh-snipped chives (photo by Claire Freierman | © THE NIBBLE.

Dill is often used to garnish a plate of smoked salmon—it’s a perfect pairing. So we tried snipping fresh dill onto our bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon.

The verdict: the more dill, the better.

The pretty, fragrant herb also has a heap of health benefits.

 
Onion lovers may prefer snipped chives as the garnish—or feel free to add both.

Members of the Allium family of vegetables—including garlic and onions—have anticancer, anticlotting, hypolipidemic (lower blood cholesterol), antibacterial, antiviral, and decongestant properties.

Here’s another tip for a healthier bagel:

Instead of high-fat cream cheese, use low-calorie, high protein Greek-style yogurt. Triple-strained, thick and creamy, we like it just as much as cream cheese on a toasted bagel.
 
 
> THE HISTORY OF BAGELS

> MAKE A BAGEL BUFFET

Every bacon lover needs a copy of
Everything Tastes Better With Bacon.

Any bacon lover would gladly eat every recipe in the book—and some of us might try to eat the gorgeous photographs.

Author Sara Perry focuses half the book on finer variations of the tried-and-true: bacon and lentil soup, corn and clam chowder with bacon, the BLT, green beans with pepper bacon and lemon zest, mashed potatoes with bacon, spinach and Fontina cheese (unless you’d prefer the warm potato salad with bacon and arugula). Spinach salad, a popular bed for bacon, gets updated with a curry vinaigrette.

Ms. Perry reminds us that bacon can be part of almost any dish. Breakfast biscuits are studded with bacon, figs with goat cheese are enhanced with bacon, a risotto is made with pepper bacon and marsala, polenta is topped with a bacon, corn and tomato ragout.

The book starts with a bacon primer: bacon types, storage, cooking tips. Any bacon lover would go hog-wild for this little cookbook. Even if you’ve made many a bacon quiche or frittata, Ms. Perry reminds you that the joy of bacon can be yours in any meal.

• Buy the book. For $12.89 on Amazon, it makes a great gift (add some artisan bacon for even more thanks).
• Check out bacon and the other cuts of pork in our Pork Cuts Glossary.
• Win a bacon buffet dinner prepared by Sara Perry? We can only dream. Instead, we’ll start with the first chapter of recipes and sally forth—a much more exciting prospect than working our way through Mastering The Art Of French Cooking. 

Save the Bloody Marys and Cosmos for fall, and make fresh fruit drinks while the sun shines.

One of our favorite summer drinks is the Watermelon Martini. Not only is fresh watermelon delicious in a cocktail, but we love garnishing the drinks with slices of melon.

• Here are six variations on a Watermelon Martini, including a Virgin Watermelontini.
• Find more of our favorite cocktail recipes and product reviews.

The Watermelon Wave includes orange
liqueur. Photo courtesy Gran Gala.