PrintThe Cartoon Kitchen: Wild Rice Pilaf
This week's Cartoon Kitchen features Serious Eats' cartoonist in residence Larry Gonick's spin on a wild rice pilaf. Enjoy! —Ed Levine
Wild Rice Pilaf
Ingredients
Hazelnuts
Andouille sausage
Plumped golden raisins
1 cup wild rice
Procedure
1. Shell a handful of hazelnuts. Roast in a 350° oven for 10 minutes. Rub off skins in dish towel; coarsely break nuts.
2. Chop an adouille or other spicy smoky sausage; sauté until browned. Add a handful of plumped golden raisins and the hazelnuts.
3. Wash and rinse the rice and add it to 5 cups of boiling, salted water. Return to boil, and simmer for 30 minutes. Drain well; combine rice with other ingredients. Reheat, stirring well, and serve.
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4 Comments:
The difference between paddy-grown wild rice and "real" wild rice isn't so much where it's grown as in how it's parched, or processed.
The commercial product is often over-cooked, producing small, black grains which, when cooked, remain shiny black grains. Decorative, but hardly edible.
Traditionally patched wild rice grains are brown/gray/green in color and explode, rather like popcorn kernals, when properly cooked:
The best way to cook Wild Rice: Rinse 1 cup Wild Rice thoroughly. Add 3 cups water (or broth) and bake in 350 degree oven, covered, for 1 1/2 hrs, or until liquid is just absorbed. Rice should be moist, not dry. Place clean linen towel between dish and lid and let rice steam for about 20 min. Fluff with fork.
Living in Northern Minnesota, I'm fortunate to obtain my wild rice directly from an Ojibway friend who has been harvesting it himself, in his canoe, for over 40 years, and who still has his rice hand parched in the traditional fashion. Even at that, I pay about $5/lb, about the same price it was 25 years ago, thanks to the commercial competition.
srhcb at 3:20PM on 01/06/08
Rice Pilaf, by definition, involves first sauteeing the rice in fat, then adding liquid, covering and cooking until done. Other things may be added, but if you haven't sauteed the rice before steaming it, you don't have pilaf.
thepictsie at 7:16PM on 01/06/08
I suppose Rice Pilaf, by definition, would also involve rice, which wild rice technically isn't.
The Nett Lake Reservation has excellent information about wild rice on their web site:
http://www.nettlakewildrice.com/
srhcb at 9:15PM on 01/06/08
Actually, you can pilaf grains other than rice, so "wild rice pilaf" is still a possible dish, as long as the pilaf methodology is actually used.
thepictsie at 2:13AM on 01/07/08