By the light of a flickering television, I knitted, furiously, a length of scarf not unlike Tom Baker’s Dr Who might sport, to wrap around and around and around. 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.Īlmost eight years ago, at the age of twenty-nine-and-a-half, I swapped a love affair with cigarettes - sucked back with such delight, such seriousness - for a less-labored daily climb to my second-floor home. 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. Bring to a boil, add 1½ teaspoons of salt then reduce the heat and simmer for 20 minutes, until the vegetables are tender.Ĭhop the remaining parsley leaves. Throw in the bay leaf and thyme and pour in the reserved rice stock along with another cup, perhaps a little more, of water. Add the vegetables to the saucepan, up the heat and fry for about 3 minutes. Cut the potato into large dice then thickly peel the celeriac and cut it too into large dice. Cook for about 10 minutes, stirring from time to time.Ĭut the carrots into thick slices and then into large irregular shapes. Add the spring onions and parsley stalks to the saucepan and cook while you chop the remaining veg. Slice the parsley leaves from their stalks, reserving the leaves. Warm the olive oil in a wide saucepan over a gentle heat. Set both stock and rice aside separately. 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 a lid, slightly ajar, on top and simmer for 40 minutes. Bring to a boil, add ½ a teaspoon of sea salt and reduce the heat to a burble. Place the wild rice in a saucepan, add the mushrooms, a teaspoon of toasted sesame oil and the water. Adapted, heavily, from Deborah Madison.ġ handful of dried mushrooms (porcini, shiitake, etc)ģ tablespoons of olive oil (or a mixture of butter and oil) Attention paid to the quality and flavour of your soy milk will make all the difference if cream is not your thing. Too often that scent is lost in and amongst other grains. Wild rice smells intoxicatingly good as it cooks. A timely reminder that spring, and change, are not too far away. They say, to me, exactly what I wanted them to. I must say, I quite like the photos for this one.
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. 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. So this beautiful and yes, clean, balance of warm, wintry earthiness and toothsome, lightly-cooked vegetables seemed to say all the right things. There’s been a lot of stodge eaten in these parts of late. 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. Not while the celeriac looks this good, anyway.Ĭlean is Deborah Madison’s typically spare description of this soup and she is, typically, spot on. Soup season may have dug its heels firmly in this week, but I’m nowhere near done with it. A jar of wild rice – long sleek grains of black and chocolate brown – and a packet of dried porcini were unearthed this weekend. If those of you who link to Nourish Me on your own sites would be kind enough to change the address in your link list, that would, of course, be wonderful.ĭigging around in the pantry these last few weeks has been quite enjoyable. The kettle’s on and there’s a tray of cookies in the oven. The boxes are packed, the removal van is in the driveway and this little weblog is moving to a new home.Ĭome on over. Blogger, you’ve been good to me, but a newer, fresher space is calling. This post is simply a fond Farewell to Blogger. In the process I’ve learned much about myself, gained some previously unimagined skills and, most amazingly of all, found a community of like-minded individuals.īut this is no Farewell to Blogging (can you tell I’ve been reading Hemingway?).
For two-and-a-half years you’ve given me a small space here in which to indulge a passion for food and photography. Relationships – good ones – should change and grow with time. Spindly, bare-branched trees have, seemingly overnight, burst into blossoms of pale pink and crisp, creamy white.
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