Port wine and Vanilla Tapioca Pudding

Sinful. Unless it refers to torturing chickens to save a few cents off the price of an egg (and I'm not sure that actually is a sin), it's a naff word to use in regards to food. And if a supercreamy tapioca pudding is someone's idea of a ticket to their own circle of hell then we all have much to worry about. Actually I'm sure the high point of my own stygian repose would be being able to listen to wails of "But Lord, it was but one Milky Bar!" as they reached up to a particularly smug group of lactose intolerants. The circles of dairy hell are:

low-fat milk
havarti cheese
cafe latte
prurient thoughts regarding milkmaids
milk
chocolate
600ml choc-milk
whipping cream
chocolate mousse
double cream
double brie
triple brie
mascarpone
Nestle Infant Formula

Anyway tapioca, in the hunt for a recipe sometimes you think it'd been invented by 'Grandma' who had a prediliction for jello and cool whip (They still talk about it in Normandy). The others involve eggs and I don't remember tapioca involving eggs. Well there's a recipe here, that's merged it with zabaglione,hence the marsala, and that made sense. I also learnt what 'half and half' is when it's not half lager, half ale. I substituted vanilla and port for the marsala

- soak 1/3 cup baby tapioca pearls for two hours, drain
- add to 2.5 cups of half cream and half milk and bring to the boil and simmer for 20 minutes. Stirring often with a whisk (or constantly if you can be bothered and you've got a heater and a telly in the kitchen)
- add 1 tsp vanilla essence and a shot of port. Simmer for another 20 minutes.
- whisk one egg and one egg yolk with 4 tbs of sugar until combined and light in colour.
- add 1/3 of the tapioca mix to the eggs, stirring constantly.
- return to the saucean and over a low heat, stir constantly for five minutes.
- pop in a glass and top with berries and whipped cream.

Sadly you can't see the multi-coloured eyes of tapioca gazing out and the $1.50 ikea glass looks like a $1.50 ikea glass (and I didn't iron the placemat) but it was independently assessed as 'the yummiest tapioca ever...creamy and dreamy' . So there you go.

Bonus pic is the Kylie Kwong steamed oysters that I had in a not very successful thai dinner. They tasted nowhere near as nice as they looked - largely due to a poor decision between Malaysian cooking wine and a four day old of bottle verdelho (it was fine on Tuesday before POTC). I chose the latter and as a further blow, the oysters weren't steamed enough to be hot, but rather not quite cold.