Time for a great side dish: Wild Rice Pilaf

Here is one of my very few original recipes, not that wild rice pilaf has never been made before! My take on it is a slightly different in one important respect: it contains toasted pine nuts — and they make a very welcome addition to the overall woodsy flavour I was going for.

Wild rice is more familiar in North America where it is considered a delicacy. It also grows and is eaten in China, but there it's the vegetation and not the seed which the Chinese go after. Most of what is harvested and eaten in Canada is what’s called Northern Wild Rice. It grows around the Great Lakes in sheltered, but also in smaller lakes and slow-flowing rivers. First Nations and others are cultivating it by planting seeds in the shallow borders of small lakes — of which Canada has plenty. In the US, most of it is cultivated in Minnesota and Wisconsin, but the majority of wild rice available commercially comes from north of the 49th parallel.

It actually isn’t technically rice at all, just a close cousin. The outer husk is tough and requires a fairly long cooking time, while the centre is quite tender. It also needs water in a ratio of 3+-to-1 rather than the lesser amount rice needs. As I mentioned above, it has a woodsy, vegetal taste which is delicate and lovely.

Wild rice is rather expensive because it cannot be harvested in large amounts and this has to be done mostly by hand. This is accomplished by shaking the seed heads into the bottom of a canoe or special flat-bottomed boat. Fortunately the seeds fall out easily. The industry is too small for mechanical means to have been developed to any large extent. One good thing is any seeds that fall into the water  — and I imagine that’s a fair bit — sink, then germinate the following year, so wild rice is self-seeding. Also because it’s not really cultivated, you’re pretty well assured that your rice is organic.

Anyway, wild rice is a lovely thing to eat and we’ve always been huge fans. Because of the price, it has to remain a treat, but my recipe also helps out with that, although it’s a byproduct of what I was trying to achieve.

This is why you see brown rice in the ingredient list. It was my wife’s suggestion, but not so much to cut down the expense. We just love the wonderful nutty flavour of brown rice which works very well with the earthiness of the wild rice. Adding to this is the addition of sautéed wild mushrooms and of course the pine nuts. Thyme and bay seem to me the perfect herbs to use, but I’ve also used rosemary and sage with success.

All in all, this is one terrific side dish, not particularly difficult to make and a most excellent accompaniment to grilled meats. We love it with sauteed salmon filets with a lemon/butter/wine sauce (photo above) or even rainbow trout.

Rick’s Wild Rice Pilaf
SERVES 4

Ingredients

1 cup good quality low-sodium stock (vegetable, chicken or beef all work well depending on what you’re serving with this)
1 Tbs olive oil
2 Tbs minced shallots
1/4 cup wild rice
2 Tbs brown rice
1 1/2 Tbs butter
1 cup sliced mushrooms (wild if you can get them)
2 Tbs pine nuts
3 fresh thyme sprigs
1 bay leaf
1/2 tsp of salt
freshly ground black pepper

Method:

1. Heat the stock until it’s nearly boiling.
2. In a saucepan, heat the olive oil until it’s fragrant. Add the minced shallots and wild rice. (Don’t have the heat above medium! Shallots burn pretty quickly.) Cook, stirring gently as the shallots soften and the rice toasts. This takes 3-5 minutes. Watch the shallots so they don’t brown.
3. Pour in the heated stock, thyme sprigs, bay leaf and salt, then cover tightly. Reduce the heat immediately so that the stock is just simmering gently. Cook for 1 hour and 20 minutes.
4. Meanwhile sauté the mushrooms in the butter until they’re beginning to brown.
5. Toast the pine nuts in a dry pan (cast iron, if you have it). Stir them gently to brown them evenly. Watch that they don’t burn! You want a nice golden brown.
6. After the hour and twenty minutes, add the brown rice to the pilaf, stir in, and recover the pot. Cook gently for an additional 40 minutes. If the pilaf looks a bit dry, add a tablespoon or two of additional stock or water.
7. When that time has passed, check to see that both grains are cooked (not crunching but not mushy). You may find they need a bit more time.
8. When the pilaf is cooked , all the liquid should have been absorbed. If the pilaf is done to your satisfaction and there is still a bit of water, simply pour it off. Remove the thyme sprigs and bay leaf.
9. Now stir in the mushrooms and pine nuts. Check the seasoning and add more salt if necessary. Don't forget the pepper!

Hazelnut Torte and a few memories

One thing you have to say for Europeans, is that they know how to make superb and interesting cakes, especially the Germans and Austrians. I know I’ll take some heat for that last part, but I believe it’s the case.

We’ve been fortunate enough to make two visits to Vienna (researching my novel, Cemetery of the Nameless), and I feel absolutely secure in saying that the level of cake baking in this city is of the highest order. Especially in the First District — the old heart of this great city — there are literally dozens of konditorei (pastry shops), each one seemingly better than the last. Every café, of which Vienna also has no lack, serves beautiful torten to moon over while enjoying a cup of Melange, the archetypical Viennese coffee. And then there’s the Sacher torte…

SIDEBAR: The Viennese love their coffee and they make it many different ways, and every one I’ve tried has been wonderful. As we were preparing to visit this city for the first time way back in 1995, I did a lot of research beforehand. Of course I ran into articles about the city’s “coffee culture”, which is where I first heard about Wiener Melange, the most ubiquitous cup to be found, but two others really piqued my interest. First was Wiener Eiskaffee (more about this some other time), and the other was Kaisermelange.

This specialty coffee is made with an egg yolk beaten with a little honey into which is poured a generous shot of espresso, then a small tot of cognac (usually), and sometimes topped with a bit of whipped cream — or schlag as the Viennese call it. Wait a minute? Did he say egg yolk? In coffee? Whoa!

Of course, I immediately decided I had to try this at the first opportunity. I was not disappointed. It is a lovely mixture. It does not need a lot of honey, but it does need a very fresh egg yolk. Here’s what looks like a decent recipe for it (https://www.justapinch.com/recipes/drink/hot-drink/kaisermelange-coffee.html), but a word of warning: I suspect you really need to be in Vienna with a slice of wonderful torten to enjoy this to the fullest. I now return you to our regularly scheduled blog post…

What is different about this hazelnut torte is that it doesn’t include flour or butter. The ground nuts and breadcrumbs stand in for it. Normally for cakes you cream butter and sugar together, the idea being that the air beaten in will expand as the cake cooks (aided by the rising action of baking powder) and give the eggs and flour a chance to “harden” during baking which supports the cake after it cools. There are a lot of complicated chemistry-type things going on, but this gives you a rough idea of what happens.

With this torte, the heavy lifting is accomplished by the eggs and butter as the “air holder” and the eggs whites provide the matrix to hold everything up as the cooking hardens the structure. And that’s the reason the cake will collapse back down a bit as it cools. It’s to be expected. You haven’t done anything wrong. This cake is just not as “robust” as a typical cake made with flour.

But boy, is it good!

The combination of equal parts hazelnuts and walnuts is at the heart of the flavour of this torte. I tried making it once just using hazelnuts, and while tasty, it just didn't measure up. If you have some way to grind your nuts fresh, go for it. It will make a difference in the flavour.

One final word, my brother-in-law, Scott Meynig, used to say Germans enjoy their cake on the stale side (he lived in Germany for a few years which is where he met my sister). In this case, a day or two helps this cake. I never bake it, frost it, and then serve it on the same day. It does improve the structure to let it sit for a day and also helps keep the whipped cream from making it a bit soggy. But make sure you wrap it or the crust will dry out too much.

Hazelnut Torte

SERVES 8-10

INGREDIENTS

1 cup sugar

12 eggs yolks

¼ lb ground hazelnuts (or filberts)

¼ lb ground walnuts

2 Tbs bread crumbs

8 egg whites

3 cups whipping cream

3 Tbs sugar

1½ tsp vanilla

3 packets whipped cream stabilizer

METHOD

1. Preheat oven to 350°. Have all ingredients at room temperature – except the whipping cream!
2. Using a mixer, beat the egg yolks, then add the sugar gradually and continue beating until the mixture is light yellow and very creamy.
3. Mix together the two nuts and the bread crumbs, then mix gently into the egg mixture.
4. Beat the egg whites until stiff, but not dry, then fold them very gently into the other ingredients until well-blended.
5. Cut a bottom liner from parchment paper for a 10" springform pan, then pour in the cake batter (no need to grease the sides) and bake until a cake tester comes out clean, about 40 minutes. Try to keep vibrations in the kitchen to a minimum. This cake falls easily! Remove from the oven and cool on a rack. When cool, cover tightly with cling film.
6. The next day, remove the cake from the pan and cut into at least two layers. Whip the cream with the sugar, stabilizer and vanilla and frost your cake. After cooking, the cake will have dropped a fair bit in the centre.* What we do is put more whipped cream in the centre of the lower layer and more in the centre on top to even out the final level of the cake. This way you don’t have a ton of whipped cream on the top which is the only other way to level it. If you cut the cake into 3 layers, this works even better.
7. We usually sprinkle more ground hazelnuts over the whipped cream which gives the cake a really nice appearance.
8. Chill thoroughly before serving. This will keep, if sealed tightly, for about 3 days, but I bet it won’t last that long!

*I might also suggest trying Wilton Bake-Even strips. These are fabric strips that you dampen and then faten around your baking pan. The cake that’s in contact with the metal sides of the pan naturally cook faster, the primary reason cakes turn out uneven. For this recipe, the cake rises nice and high, but as it cools, the centre drops down, sometimes by nearly inch, hence my recommendation about the filling up above. Bake-Even Strips will help with this. The cake will still drop a bit in the centre, but not as much. They work a treat on any cake, by the way, and are well worth buying if you bake a lot.