Italian Rice Pie Recipe for Easter

This sweet rice pie is a traditional Italian Easter treat (and it's vegetarian - sorry, no-limits-soldiers...). It's lemony! Mmm!

This is my grandmother's recipe with a few altercations.

9 eggs
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 lbs ricotta cheese - not the light kind - it's dessert!
2 cups heavy whipping cream
1 cup uncooked white rice
2 1/2 lemons
cinnamon powder
cardamom powder
nutmeg powder

0. Pre-heat oven to 350 or 325 or something. 325. Oh and get the cream out so it's not cold - should be room temp or a li'l warmer (that's one of the "secrets").

1. The next "secret" is that you have to cook the rice until it's only half done. To prepare rice I always use two cups of agua to one cup rice, but for this recipe I use three or four cups, bring it to a boil, and then let it simmer on the lowest possible heat for about 10 mins. I then pour it in a colander to drain, wash it with cold water to stop the cooking, shake off as much excess water as possible, and quickly pour it into the batter (see below) to stop it from clumping. It should be a little hard but not crunchy - this is so the rice pie is firm, not mushy.

2. Batter - Use a pretty big bowl
First beat the eggs well. The eggs make the custard firm. Don't use 7, maybe 11 OK. It needs to be an odd #.
Put ricotta in a separate bowl and add the eggs slowly, mixing well (if you add the ricotta to the eggs it will be hard to get rid of the lumps).
Then add sugar and cream. Mix a mix a. Oh - I shook the cream in the carton for about 2 minutes cause I wanted it to get a little viscouser to help the rice float. I don't know if that made a difference, so next time I will shake it more. But it shouldn't be like whipped cream, that's for sure.
Oh and a dash or two of salt - depends on if the ricotta is salty or not.
Juice the lemons and grate the rind of two of them and add all that. Mmm - lemony!
Add a 1/4 teaspoon minus of cinnamon and a tiny pinch of nutmeg and cardamom (I actually add these to the sugar and mix it up beforehand because the powdered spice tends to clump together in the lipidy mix). Don't tell my grandmother that I use cardamom - it's an Indian spice, you know, the taste from Chai? That's another "secret," OK? Oh - it's real expensive, but you should have it cause it's real good for curries and in coffee (for true, try it). It's a MAO inhibitor though, so don't use too much. And you shouldn't use too much anyway cause it's a mega-spice like cloves or nutmeg and you only need a teeny bit.
Finally add the cooked rice (if you add it before all the mixing it will get mushy).
Some people use pineapple, but they will burn in hell.
Now everything's added, right? If I forgot anything, add it now.

3. Put the batter in a big rectangle pan. The finished pie will be like 2 inches deep, so think about that. Maybe 14 inches by nine or so? As always with cakes and bread, thin aluminum is best because it doesn't have a high heat capacity like iron, glass or ceramic. Those things will make the bottoms and sides cook faster than the middle and maybe get too hard cause of physics. That's my theory. Oh, then, so it's in right? Sprinkle cinnamon all on top so it's all cinnamony - not a full coat or anything, just a sprinkling everywhere.

4. It cooks for an hour maybe, but sometimes less, sometimes more especially if you didn't listen to me and used cold cream which will make the middle cook slow - I know cause I did it that way once. The way you know it's done is this old trick - you stick in a knife, into the middle not the side, and pull it out. It shouldn't have batter on it. It won't be dry - it'll have water or something on it cause it's not a cake, but it shouldn't have white battery stuff on it. Then it's done and you should take it out and put it in a cool place.

5. It gets served cold so keep it in the fridge and it really makes sense to make a day early cause of that. Oh and it gets cut up into 2 by 2 inch squares and you can eat it with your fingers. If it's too custardy for that then you did it wrong and that's not my fault. It's really good though.

Is that entirely clear?