Why I'd rather cook on the wild side
I'm attracted to underdog ingredients: the lesser-known, the slightly obscure, the quirky. When kale is the green of the moment, I want to talk about mustard greens. When all I hear is quinoa, quinoa, quinoa, I'm apt to bring up barley. Sell me on tofu, and I'll counter with tempeh.
I'll defend those preferences to the end, but I'll also acknowledge that they make me run the risk of seeming like the culinary equivalent of those too-cool-for-school music fans. You know, the ones who would sooner die than admit that the latest Taylor Swift song has an appealing hook, and whose fandom always seems in directly inverse proportion to record sales.
That is what brings me to wild rice. When is the last time you cooked with it? I'll bet it was last Thanksgiving, or possibly the Thanksgiving before that, if not still longer ago. I've had a bag crammed among dozens and dozens of other grains in my pantry for months and months now, and I've been waiting for a recipe to come my way that would inspire me to break it out.
The one that did the trick is from Robin Asbell's new cookbook, "The Whole Grain Promise" (Running Press, 2015): You cook the wild rice, then toss it with roasted sweet potato chunks, pears, scallions and parsley, coat the whole affair in a simple maple-lemon dressing, and sprinkle walnuts on top. This autumnal beauty could be a simple salad on any given weeknight, or a festive side dish for a holiday party.
Besides its delightfully chewy texture and nutty flavor, wild rice turns out to have one of the highest levels of protein of any whole grain (it's technically a grass). Higher, even, than quinoa (which is technically a seed). But the fact that it's underused might be the best selling point of all. In Asbell's book, with its multiple choices of recipes that feature buckwheat and oats and brown rice, guess how many call for wild rice?
Just one. Which makes it perfect for me.
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