A fragrant bowl of wild rice

Digging around in the pantry these last few weeks has been quite enjoyable. A jar of wild rice – long sleek grains of black and chocolate brown – and a packet of dried porcini were unearthed this weekend. Soup season may have dug its heels firmly in this week, but I’m nowhere near done with it. Not while the celeriac looks this good, anyway.

Clean is Deborah Madison’s typically spare description of this soup and she is, typically, spot on. Clean, as a descriptor, may not seal the deal on recipes ordinarily, but by this stage of winter I find myself longing for something lighter. There’s been a lot of stodge eaten in these parts of late. So this beautiful and yes, clean, balance of warm, wintry earthiness and toothsome, lightly-cooked vegetables seemed to say all the right things. A cloudy, fragrant stock from simmering wild rice and dried mushrooms together; a little soothing creaminess stirred through at the last moment and I served it with a little saucer of amber sesame oil to dribble, at will, across the surface.

The recipe below is the result of gleaning a little from each of Deborah Madison’s wild rice chowders, some streamlining from experience and a small bottle of organic, unhomogenised cream from Tasmania. I must say, I quite like the photos for this one. They say, to me, exactly what I wanted them to. Fresh, clean, healthy. With cream.

It is excellent. A timely reminder that spring, and change, are not too far away.

A wild rice and celeriac soup – feeds 4
Wild rice smells intoxicatingly good as it cooks. Too often that scent is lost in and amongst other grains. Not here. Here, it is star. Attention paid to the quality and flavour of your soy milk will make all the difference if cream is not your thing. Adapted, heavily, from Deborah Madison.

3 handfuls of wild rice (about ¾ cup)
1 handful of dried mushrooms (porcini, shiitake, etc)
Toasted sesame oil
6 cups of water
Sea salt
3 tablespoons of olive oil (or a mixture of butter and oil)
1 large bundle of spring onions
1 bunch of parsley
2 carrots
2 stalks of celery
1 fist-sized potato, scrubbed well
1 small celeriac
1 bay leaf
A few healthy sprigs of thyme
½ cup soy milk or thin cream
Pepper

Place the wild rice in a saucepan, add the mushrooms, a teaspoon of toasted sesame oil and the water. Bring to a boil, add ½ a teaspoon of sea salt and reduce the heat to a burble. Set a lid, slightly ajar, on top and simmer for 40 minutes. When ready – the grains will butterfly open, bursting from their skins – set a strainer over a large bowl to collect the rice stock and drain. Set both stock and rice aside separately.

Warm the olive oil in a wide saucepan over a gentle heat. Trim the spring onions and chop finely. Slice the parsley leaves from their stalks, reserving the leaves. Finely chop the stalks. Add the spring onions and parsley stalks to the saucepan and cook while you chop the remaining veg. Cook for about 10 minutes, stirring from time to time.

Cut the carrots into thick slices and then into large irregular shapes. Trim and slice the celery stalks. Cut the potato into large dice then thickly peel the celeriac and cut it too into large dice. Add the vegetables to the saucepan, up the heat and fry for about 3 minutes. Throw in the bay leaf and thyme and pour in the reserved rice stock along with another cup, perhaps a little more, of water. Bring to a boil, add 1½ teaspoons of salt then reduce the heat and simmer for 20 minutes, until the vegetables are tender.

Chop the remaining parsley leaves. Add the soy milk or cream to the soup, remove the bay leaf and tip in the rice and mushrooms and most of the parsley leaves. Warm through and serve in deep bowls, each garnished with a little parsley, lots of pepper and a few droplets of toasted sesame oil to round things off nicely.

Celeriac

It’s an ugly brute celeriac, heavy to hold, gnarled and scarred.

Those roots are a tangled mess. But beneath that rough exterior lurks an ever-so-slightly pale green flesh that quickly oxidizes on contact with the air. The thick skin it would seem shields a very sensitive creature indeed.

The celeriac was a last minute purchase on Saturday at the market. I was actually looking for some witlof to braise with slivers of sun-dried tomato, garlic and the last of the preserved lemons. Instead, I came home with this swollen root, leaves still proudly standing to attention on top. Though they wilted within two days, the root was happy to sit on the bench without them. What to cook?

There are many choices of course: with its close cousin celery in a savory, wholemeal bread and pecorino-topped crumble; cooked with green lentils, garlic and herbs; a soup perhaps? But with a sudden and unexpected downpour of rain, a gratin was calling.

Combined with earthy porcini mushrooms, onion, garlic and licorice-scented star anise, it is a beast transformed. The porcini are soaked in brandy, tamari and boiling water. Simmered in stock until tender and finished with a little cream, this is a delicious meal. Though I’d like to claim this as my own (it’s very, very good) I can’t and won’t even try. It comes from the incredible and exotic Nadine Abensur. Though the recipe appears in her latest book Enjoy (and you should look for it – there’s not a dud in the whole thing) you’ll find the recipe on this site where there’s a printer-friendly version.

Keep a large bowl of cold water, acidulated with the juice of a lemon or lime next to you as you slice the beast. Dunk slices in as they are cut to stop them turning an unsightly shade of grey. I used cheddar rather than gruyere, just scattered it on top of the dish before serving and naturally halved the recipe as there were just the two of us.

That means that I still have half a celeriac to go.

Reckon that crumble sounds good.