It’s funny how tastes change — when I was a kid, I used to hate wild rice (I thought of it as “funny rice,” and I don’t mean funny in a good way), but now it’s one of my favorites. Granted, what we see called “wild” rice is actually a cultivated variety grown in California; [...]
It’s almost summer, things are finally green, and I’m actually excited about mowing the lawn again. It’s a lot better than shoveling snow! Or mopping the basement floor with an old towel when the heavy early-spring rains hit and you get water in places you don’t want to get water. Hot summer days sound pretty [...]
Toasting and roasting. Both techniques are simple and add incredible depth to whatever ingredient you’re emphasizing or dish you’re serving. Recently, it occurred to me that toasted nuts have such a deep flavor that they could probably stand in for cheese. I’m a huge cheese fan, but for those who can’t have cheese, toasted nuts [...]
“Wild rice” is one of those culinary misnomers that says what it doesn’t mean — the true plant grows wild rather than cultivated, and it isn’t rice. And actually, most of what we see labeled wild rice isn’t wild, either, because most of it is a cultivated cousin to the original wild rice. (“Buckwheat” is [...]
Continue reading about Culinary Sleuthing: Will the Real Wild Rice Please Stand Up?
Risotto is one of those luxurious dishes that I don’t take the time to make very often–the stirring and cooking seem to take forever. Maybe because it’s so hard not to immediately start eating something that smells so good! Fortunately, last week I invented a dish with that lovely creamy-crunchiness of risotto and a blend [...]
Continue reading about Visiting the Wild Side, Italian-Style
Wild rice is an aquatic plant that’s native to North America. Along with maize (a.k.a. corn), wild rice is our claim to fame in the cereal world. (“Cereal” meaning any type of edible grasses cultivated for their seeds; these grains are named after Ceres, the Roman goddess of the harvest.) Like brown rice–another whole grain–wild [...]
