There is a bar my boyfriend and I like to go to called Commonwealth, in Park Slope. It’s become somewhat of a ritual to sit at the bar, play Scrabble and order tacos. He’s never beaten me. Last night, to be fair, it looked like he was going to–but I cut the game short because I was just too tired to play any longer. Any suspicions of fakery he might have had were put to rest (I hope) when I fell asleep approximately eight seconds (at his count) after getting home, still in jeans and blazer.

I don’t know if it says more about our urban nature or our alcohol dependency that our idea of a picnic is for me to pack a dinner to eat at our Scrabble bar. I crammed ricotta-pea puree and strozzapreti (which means “priest choker” in Italian, and might make an affectionate nickname for Christopher Hitchens) into take-out containers, heaped shards of crisped prosciutto into a Ziploc bag, and made rough, trifle-like verrines in rocks glasses out of steamed chocolate pudding, strawberries and more of that ricotta (minus the peas).

[A verrine is a French portmanteau of “verre” (glass) and “terrine” (which I hope needs no explanation). They’re very fashionable these days, or at least the word is–the form is not exactly an innovation. It’s not to be confused with the Christian demon of impatience.]

I’m not writing this post just to gloat about my Scrabble skillz–which are, as they say in my neighbourhood, mad–but to share with you a most miraculous recipe: Barbara Kafka’s microwave chocolate pudding. This recipe will change your life.

How often do you read a recipe that actually teaches you a new technique? I find this regularly with Gordon Ramsay’s recipes, which are accessible, and with Thomas Keller’s recipes, which are not. Too often, though, to read the name of a recipe is enough. You get the general idea of the flavour combinations (mullet, tomatoes and pancetta, say) and cooking method (braising), and then you skip the method and hit the kitchen. For someone of my personality (impatient) and experience (interning with a cookbook author and a phenomenal food photographer), the vast majority of cookbooks are a disappointment. I never buy them.

How pleasant, then, to come across a recipe that is simple, delicious and teaches you to look at an ingredient (chocolate) and an oft-scorned tool (the microwave) in a whole new light. Having absorbed the essentials of the technique, I will go on to make all manner of steamed puddings. In under nine minutes a pop.

Barbara Kafka’s recipe for steamed chocolate pudding was first published in 1987, and reprinted in Mark Bittman’s Times column last month. I found this out after visiting Ms Kafka’s website; I missed the column because I have an almost fanatical dislike for Mark Bittman. But I digress, and spitefully.

Take three minutes to combine the ingredients for this steamed microwave pudding, and five minutes to zap the thing. I halved the ingredients to make a smaller pudding, used precisely no measuring devices, subbed ricotta for heavy cream–and it still worked beautifully. The texture is the fluffy unctuousness of a sticky toffee pudding, and the effort expended is not much more than it takes to eat it.

Steamed Chocolate Pudding: “a dessert to dream about”.

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