Wild Rice with Currants and Ramps
The food of autumn is celebratory in nature, comforting and lush. An autumnal pork roast arrives at table on a freshet of steam scented with rosemary and apple. A tumble of earthy mushrooms crowns a bowl of silken risotto for a simple weeknight dinner; for an even simpler dinner, we pass puffy biscuits along with a bowl of steaming succotash. For Sunday Supper we gather round the hearth fire to fill our bowls with generous helpings of beef stew. Cider, the essence of autumn, is served hot and spiced in cups, sweetly spread on warm muffins, even ladled into our bowl of chicken and vegetables. We wash our dinner down with a malty-sweet pour of pumpkin ale. For dessert, there’s a spicy cake topped with buttery brandied pears, served with plenty of hot coffee. For brave souls, there’s even a slab of mincemeat pie.
But the centerpiece meal of autumn – fittingly, also the season’s last hurrah before winter festivities commence – is Thanksgiving dinner. It’s inconceivable to me not to host Thanksgiving dinner – as you’ll read in a forthcoming column, I’ve been doing so for more years than I can recount -- but I number among family, friends and readers individuals who don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. For some, it is because they are not American, and, while they respect this distinctly American holiday as far as they encounter it, it means about as much to them as Boxing Day means to Americans. For some, it is because they are Native Americans, and they see Thanksgiving not just as a white person’s holiday but one that is especially controversial, even painful, to First Americans.
My grandmother was Osage and so am I, so I respect that viewpoint among those who have it. But my grandmother took a different approach. Though she had been born into an Indian clan on a settlement on the White River, her husband was white and a turkey farmer to boot. She ran their Oklahoma homestead with respect for her own family heritage but as a farmstead modern to those times. To her, Thanksgiving was important not as an illustration or an effect of the struggle between colonial and Native Americas but as an opportunity to share.
It was expected that an Oklahoma homestead would deliver a generous and grateful Thanksgiving, and hers did. Word traveled via moccasin telegraph that there would be food “down on the farm” for anyone who wanted to show up, and it was understand that one might be put to work when one arrived. People did arrive, often bearing their own house specialty in their finest serving dish. All of the food, from these offerings to my grandfather’s turkeys cooked with my grandmother’s unfailing skill, was placed on the sideboard, as guests jockeyed to fill their plates and find a place to sit. The event was so festive that she even looked the other way when the menfolk opened a few contraband bottles of beer. I can still see her pushing tendrils of hair behind her ears and smiling a secret smile as she oversaw what was, on this holiday that was controversial and beloved in equal measure, essentially a potlatch.
Though there was a definite farmhouse aesthetic to my grandmother's food, her cooking took a decidedly Native turn at Thanksgiving. She prepared turkeys using an indigenous method of curing fresh kill birds with salt, herbs and river water that presaged the practice of brining. She had put up succotash during summer canning, when the corn and beans were at the height of their flavors. A big bowl of roasted seeds from the jack o’lanterns was placed on the gleaming walnut surface of the table in the hallway, so that guests could scoop up a spoonful in passing as they dropped off or collected their hats and pocketbooks. The pumpkin flesh was baked into pies for the dessert board or bread for the ride home. The bread was baked in a marathon session in early November in the coffee cans my grandmother collected year round for just that purpose. She made her dressing with cornbread and pecans and harvested her own turnip greens and canned her own cranberry sauce from berries special ordered for her by a grocer in Tulsa.
These berries were no more indigenous to the American southwest than was wild rice, but she served both. It would not have occurred to her not to. In her mind, these dishes formed a connection with the first ancestors from across the continent. I believe that she felt genuine kinship with the keepers of the cranberry bogs of the northeast and grassy marshes of the far north. She understood the sacredness of native foods from corn and squash to deer and buffalo meat, and transmitted this from field to kitchen and from dish to plate. For the official Urban Home recipe for cranberry sauce, click here. And for a recipe for a sumptuous wild rice side dish with which to make your Thanksgiving sideboard -- and its visitors -- groan, see below.
WILD RICE WITH CURRANTS AND RAMPS
American wild rice is not a rice but the grains of one of three species of marsh grasses native to North America. Wild rice must be harvested by hand, which accounts for its status as a delicacy. Be sure your wild rice is harvested in the Great Lakes or Gulf regions, preferably by a Native American business from a tribe to whom this grain is sacred, such as the Ojibwa and Chippewa. It is important to inspect your wild rice before you plan to cook it. The grains should be long, thin and chestnut colored with an earthy fragrance; none of them should display signs of mold. If they do, do not use this rice; return it for a fresh batch. If you can't find the wild onion known as ramps, use scallions.
1 cup wild rice
1 cup chicken or turkey stock, preferably homemade
2 cups cold water
1/2 cup dried currants
1/4 cup unsweetened cranberry juice
1 bunch wild ramps
2 teaspoons dried rubbed sage
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 dried bay leaf
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
But the centerpiece meal of autumn – fittingly, also the season’s last hurrah before winter festivities commence – is Thanksgiving dinner. It’s inconceivable to me not to host Thanksgiving dinner – as you’ll read in a forthcoming column, I’ve been doing so for more years than I can recount -- but I number among family, friends and readers individuals who don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. For some, it is because they are not American, and, while they respect this distinctly American holiday as far as they encounter it, it means about as much to them as Boxing Day means to Americans. For some, it is because they are Native Americans, and they see Thanksgiving not just as a white person’s holiday but one that is especially controversial, even painful, to First Americans.
My grandmother was Osage and so am I, so I respect that viewpoint among those who have it. But my grandmother took a different approach. Though she had been born into an Indian clan on a settlement on the White River, her husband was white and a turkey farmer to boot. She ran their Oklahoma homestead with respect for her own family heritage but as a farmstead modern to those times. To her, Thanksgiving was important not as an illustration or an effect of the struggle between colonial and Native Americas but as an opportunity to share.
It was expected that an Oklahoma homestead would deliver a generous and grateful Thanksgiving, and hers did. Word traveled via moccasin telegraph that there would be food “down on the farm” for anyone who wanted to show up, and it was understand that one might be put to work when one arrived. People did arrive, often bearing their own house specialty in their finest serving dish. All of the food, from these offerings to my grandfather’s turkeys cooked with my grandmother’s unfailing skill, was placed on the sideboard, as guests jockeyed to fill their plates and find a place to sit. The event was so festive that she even looked the other way when the menfolk opened a few contraband bottles of beer. I can still see her pushing tendrils of hair behind her ears and smiling a secret smile as she oversaw what was, on this holiday that was controversial and beloved in equal measure, essentially a potlatch.
Though there was a definite farmhouse aesthetic to my grandmother's food, her cooking took a decidedly Native turn at Thanksgiving. She prepared turkeys using an indigenous method of curing fresh kill birds with salt, herbs and river water that presaged the practice of brining. She had put up succotash during summer canning, when the corn and beans were at the height of their flavors. A big bowl of roasted seeds from the jack o’lanterns was placed on the gleaming walnut surface of the table in the hallway, so that guests could scoop up a spoonful in passing as they dropped off or collected their hats and pocketbooks. The pumpkin flesh was baked into pies for the dessert board or bread for the ride home. The bread was baked in a marathon session in early November in the coffee cans my grandmother collected year round for just that purpose. She made her dressing with cornbread and pecans and harvested her own turnip greens and canned her own cranberry sauce from berries special ordered for her by a grocer in Tulsa.
These berries were no more indigenous to the American southwest than was wild rice, but she served both. It would not have occurred to her not to. In her mind, these dishes formed a connection with the first ancestors from across the continent. I believe that she felt genuine kinship with the keepers of the cranberry bogs of the northeast and grassy marshes of the far north. She understood the sacredness of native foods from corn and squash to deer and buffalo meat, and transmitted this from field to kitchen and from dish to plate. For the official Urban Home recipe for cranberry sauce, click here. And for a recipe for a sumptuous wild rice side dish with which to make your Thanksgiving sideboard -- and its visitors -- groan, see below.
WILD RICE WITH CURRANTS AND RAMPS
American wild rice is not a rice but the grains of one of three species of marsh grasses native to North America. Wild rice must be harvested by hand, which accounts for its status as a delicacy. Be sure your wild rice is harvested in the Great Lakes or Gulf regions, preferably by a Native American business from a tribe to whom this grain is sacred, such as the Ojibwa and Chippewa. It is important to inspect your wild rice before you plan to cook it. The grains should be long, thin and chestnut colored with an earthy fragrance; none of them should display signs of mold. If they do, do not use this rice; return it for a fresh batch. If you can't find the wild onion known as ramps, use scallions.
1 cup wild rice
1 cup chicken or turkey stock, preferably homemade
2 cups cold water
1/2 cup dried currants
1/4 cup unsweetened cranberry juice
1 bunch wild ramps
2 teaspoons dried rubbed sage
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 dried bay leaf
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
- Place inspected rice into a colander and rinse the rice under a stream of cool water.
- Place a large stock pot or saucier on the stove top. Decant the water and stock into the pot. Add several shakes of salt to the liquid in the pot.
- Cover the pot and turn the burner to high.
- Measure the dried currants into a small bowl. Pick through them and discard foreign particles if any.
- Measure the cranberry juice into the bowl containing the currants. Use a silicon spatula to mix the currants and the juice together. Set aside to reconstitute while you prepare the rice.
- Once the water/stock mixture has achieved a full rolling boil, add the rice to the pot in a thin stream. It will look as if there is too much liquid for the amount of rice; that is okay. The rice will absorb almost all of the liquid as it cooks.
- Add the dried sage, bay leaf and several grindings of fresh black pepper to the pot containing the liquid and the rice. Stir all of the ingredients together.
- Place the lid on the pot, making sure it fits securely. Turn the burner to low.
- Cook (no peeking!) for 45 minutes.
- While the rice is cooking, lay the ramps on the cutting board. Align the ramps side by side and across the bottom. Cut across the bottom of the row of ramps to remove and discard the stringy root ends of the ramps. Use the knife to cut across the top of each ramp where the green part starts to show softening or roughening. Use your hands to pull away and discard the papery outer skin of each ramp where present; not all ramps will have this.
- Align the cleaned and prepped ramps on the cutting board. Use the knife to cut across the ramps to form coins.
- Scrape the cut ramps into a bowl until ready to assemble the dish.
- After 30 minutes, check the currants. They should be plump and chewy. Drain the currants in the colander.
- After 45 minutes, remove the lid from the cooking pot. The grains should be plump and tender and have absorbed most or all of the liquid. Taste one to confirm; if warranted, replace the lid and cook for five more minutes.
- Once the rice is cooked, 45 - 50 minutes per step 14 above, turn off the burner and remove the pan from the heat. Working carefully to avoid steam, gently shake the cooked wild rice into the colander that contains the drained currants. Add the butter to the hot rice in the colander. Remove and discard the bay leaf.
- Use the silicon spatula to stir the buttered and seasoned wild rice together with the reconstituted currants.
- Leave the mixture in the colander until ready to serve. Just before serving, stir the ramps through the wild rice and currants.
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