North America · Volume 30, The Three Sisters, the Bison and the Piki Stone
Wild Rice with Maple and Berries
Menominee Nation, Wisconsin
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- Not statedNo source states a time and the atlas has too few comparable dishes to estimate one.
- Researched
- No outside sources linked
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
As tradition built it
Wild Rice with Maple and Berries
Menominee, via WTTW Chicago's documentation of the tradition. About 40 minutes simmer.
Ingredients
- 1 cup wild rice
- 8 cups water
- 1 pint mixed blueberries, raspberries and blackberries
- 1 pint strawberries, sliced
- 1 cup pecans or walnuts
- 1 cup maple syrup
Method
- Rinse the rice.
- Bring to the boil in the water, then reduce to a simmer and cook roughly 40 minutes until the grains puff, longer for a softer, more pudding-like result.
- Strain, then stir in the maple syrup while the rice is still warm.
- Cool, then fold in the berries and nuts gently to avoid crushing them.
What a modern chef changes
Toasting, reducing and dehydrating within the grain's own logic
Rungs 02, 03
Method
- Toast the drained, cooked rice briefly and separately in a dry pan before it meets the maple syrup, a genuine way of concentrating the parching flavour the traditional harvest process already gives the grain.
- Reduce the maple syrup itself a shade further in a small pan before stirring it through, using the same principle as the pre-kettle stone-boiling reduction named on the technique ladder, achieved by a controllable modern flame instead.
- Dehydrate a portion of the berries lightly before folding them through, for a concentrated, chewier textural contrast against the toasted rice and syrup-soft fruit.