What do you cook when life throws you a curve?
Comfort food. Mushrooms. Wild rice. Butter.
As I convalesce after recently breaking my knee while gardening (I know. I know. It was a real klutz move.), I have been focused on food that is easy to prepare, familiar and delicious.
This New York Times recipe by Shellie Holmes and Ligaya Mishan caught my fancy. .
I had a lot of trouble finding the wild rice for this recipe, though. Trader Joe’s, my usual source, said it was a seasonal item.There was none in the big supermarkets here either. So, it was Amazon to the rescue. I ended up buying a cultivated wild rice raised by Minnesota’s Red Lake Chippewa Nation. It made sense to buy Indian rice; wild rice has been a staple food for indigenous people for thousands of years. (Red Nation has a direct website but I found it pretty glitchy. I hope to buy from them directly in the future. )
As you probably know, wild rice is only a distant cousin of the rice we commonly consume. It’s long grains are harvested from cool-climate water grass in the Great Lakes region of North America. According to food historian and food expert Harold McGee, wild rice is the only cereal from North America to have become an important food. He describes the cereal as having a flavor that is “earthy and green, flowery, with tea notes.” Does that sound wonderful or what?
I’m thinking this wild rice (absent the mushrooms) also would be a wonderful bowl for breakfast, dressed with a bit of maple syrup and sprinkled with pecans.
Here’s the recipe as I prepared it in my kitchen.
Wild Rice With Mushrooms and Sherry
Ingredients
- 4 ounces wild rice
- 4 T. butter
- 1/2 pound cremini mushrooms (sliced)
- 1/4 t. salt (or to taste)
- Black Pepper (to taste)
- 1/4 C. cooking sherry
Directions
- Step 1 Rinse the wild rice in a colander and drain. Bring a pot of water to boil. Add the rice and reduce the heat of the water to simmering. Simmer for about 40 minutes covered. You want the rice to be al dente done and just beginning to pop. When the rice is done, drain and set aside.
- Step 2 Melt half of the butter in a saucepan and sauté half of the mushrooms until they release their water and turn a golden brown. Remove the mushrooms from the pan and set aside. Repeat with the remaining mushrooms.
- Step 3 Add the mushrooms that you set aside back into the hot pan. Season to your taste with salt and pepper. Deglaze the pan with the sherry. Stir the sherry until most of the liquid has evaporated. Do not let the mushrooms get over done. You want the mushrooms to be moist.
- Step 4 Add the cooked wild rice back into the pan with the cooked mushrooms. Stir and heat. Add more salt and pepper to your taste.
