Chocolate Pudding

Valentine's Day fell on a Friday and the post office line at lunchtime was longer than I would have predicted, the population of Hinesburg apparently still committed to the practice of mailing cards and small gifts even in a time when most people send a text and call it done. I was there to mail the card I send Carol every year on this date, the card being something Helen instituted in the second year of our marriage when she noticed that Carol's husband Don was not a card-sender and that Carol minded more than she said, and I have continued the practice in Helen's name now for fifty-two years, which is the kind of small enduring obligation that adds up to something larger if you do it long enough. Carol does not need the card. She has it anyway. That is the entire transaction.

For supper I made the steak the way I have made it every Valentine's Day since 1981 — a single ribeye, cast iron, butter and thyme and garlic, sliced against the grain, eaten at the kitchen table with a baked potato and a salad. Helen and I shared this exact meal for forty-one years and I have continued it for the past three Februarys alone, which is not a celebration exactly but is more than mere supper, the meal occupying the place in the calendar that requires marking and being marked the way it has always been marked. There is no improvement on the recipe. There is only the cooking of it, the eating of it, the wash-up after.

I read for an hour after the meal — Hemingway's "Big Two-Hearted River" again, which I read about every February because the Nick Adams story of fishing alone in the burnt country after the war is the story I keep returning to in winter, the rhythm of the narrative and the precision of the camp-cooking sentences and the not-saying of what is being said all working on me the way they have worked on me since I first read it at twenty. I taught it for thirty-eight years. I have not stopped reading it. The day I stop reading it will be the day I stop teaching, finally, and I am not ready for that day yet.

The dog and I went out for a walk after dinner — short, twenty minutes, the temperature in the low twenties and the moon nearly full and the snow blue-white in the moonlight. He padded along the road shoulder where the plow had cleared a strip down to gravel and his breath came out in small clouds and the world was quiet in the way that Vermont is quiet in February, which is the quietest sound on earth. There was no one else out. There were no cars. The houses up and down the road had their windows lit and their woodsmoke rising and their kitchens visible faintly through the curtains. We walked. We came back. The kitchen was warm. The fire was still going. I poured a small measure of bourbon and sat in the reading chair and the dog arranged himself across my feet and I thought about Helen and the forty-one Valentine's Days we shared and the three I have done alone, and I did not cry, and I did not not cry, and the line between those two states is so thin in the middle of February that you stop trying to draw it.

I do not usually make a dessert. Helen was the dessert-maker in this house, and after forty-one years of being the beneficiary of that I have not much attempted to fill the gap. But there was a small amount of bittersweet chocolate left from something I had made in January, and the bourbon was poured, and the dog was settled, and I thought that the evening deserved one more small thing — not a celebration, but a comma before bed. Chocolate pudding is what I made, slow on the stove, stirred the way you have to stir it, and it was right in the way that simple things on hard nights are sometimes exactly right.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 15 minutes | Total Time: 25 minutes (plus chilling) | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1/3 cup granulated sugar
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon fine salt
2 3/4 cups whole milk
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped (optional, for deeper flavor)

Instructions

Combine dry ingredients. In a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan, whisk together the sugar, cocoa powder, cornstarch, and salt until evenly blended with no lumps.
Add the milk. Gradually whisk in the milk, starting with a small splash and working in more until the mixture is fully smooth. This prevents lumps from the cornstarch.
Cook and stir. Place the saucepan over medium heat and cook, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon or heatproof spatula, until the pudding thickens and comes to a gentle boil — about 10 to 12 minutes. Once it boils, stir for one full minute more.
Finish the pudding. Remove from heat. Add the butter, vanilla, and chopped chocolate if using. Stir until everything is melted and glossy.
Portion and cool. Pour into four small bowls or ramekins. Press a piece of plastic wrap directly against the surface of each if you prefer no skin. Allow to cool at room temperature for 20 minutes, then refrigerate until set, at least 2 hours.
Serve. Eat cold from the refrigerator or allow to come to room temperature for 10 minutes before serving. A small spoonful of whipped cream is welcome but not required.

Nutrition (per serving)

Chocolate Pudding — The Small Sweet at the End of a Long February Night