Crash Test Kitchen

When Cristy came to visit from Australia (via Ontario) she brought a packet of earthy, wholesome “wild rice” grown in Manitoba. Technically it isn’t rice at all, but the seed of some kind of water plant.

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A pilaf seemed like the right thing to make, so we came up with this recipe using ingredients that were pretty much straight out of the earth: fresh asparagus, fried and chopped; crimini, or brown, mushrooms, quartered and browned; lovely vine-ripened tomatoes, roasted; shiitake mushrooms sliced and cooked in a soy-based sweet and sour jus; and roasted sweet potato, cubed.

At least we thought it was sweet potato. Turns out it was yam. They look pretty much the same!

We’d heard wild rice has a rather strong flavour so we decided to lighten it by also cooking a cup of organic brown basmati in chicken stock.

Easier said than done. It seems cooking time and water quantity for organic brown basmati is different from ordinary white basmati.

Still, we fudged the basmati a bit and it came out yummy. The wild rice has really great texture - chewy and slightly crunchy is probably the best way to describe it - and a great, grassy, earthy flavour.

When combined with the other ingredients, the whole thing turned out an absolute masterpiece. All we really needed was to be sitting round the fire by a mosquito-ridden lake singing “Kumbayah” for the earth-lovin’-hippy picture to be complete.

- Lenny