Nutty wild rice & vegetables, well balanced dish + Wine pairing
Nutty wild rice with vegetables, in this case broccoli, a refreshing slightly tang salad, and a bit of heat from a tomato salsa. Great combi for a comforting and well balanced meal.
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
🥘 Main ingredients
- broccoli
- courgettes
- cucumber
- wild rice, or brown rice
- lemon
- olive oil
- onion
- spring onion
- parsley
- walnuts
- peas
- tomato
- red onion
- red chilli pepper paste
- Tabasco
- any nut oil or sesame oil
💭 Thoughts and variations
I love to just start creating, while cooking. If I don’t cook professional I just start without knowing the end product. I decide on certain flavours and textures which I want to combine, and while playing, things get added, or put away back in the fridge 😉
Wild rice and green vegetables work very well together because of the natural nuttiness. And together with it’s accompaniments you can create a combination of pure and great flavours; nutty, fresh/slight tang, and spice. I like the crunchiness from the toasted walnuts, and personally I like it when the broccoli is just cooked / blanched, with still a bite to it. Because I wanted to keep the flavours pure, I decided not to add too much other strong flavours. I didn’t use garlic, or strong herbs.
So this nutty wild rice dish is easy adjustable to your own liking, you could add;
- garlic, or roasted garlic
- herbs, like thyme, summer savory, or chives
- Replace the nuts with other nuts or toasted seeds. Think of hazelnut, pine nuts or almonds. Sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds.
- Add green beans to the vegetables.
- The salad can be replaced with any other salad, like a tangy pomegranate salad or a small chicory salad. Or you can just skip the salad completely and just enjoy the rice dish 🙂
If you like this style of dish, check out my black garlic spelt dish, which has very much a similar feel to it.
🍷 Wine pairing
This nutty dish with a refreshing salad, would go very well with a nice full round and oaked white, with medium to high acidity. Think of an aged Chardonnay from the côte de Beaune, Santa Barbara or Hawke’s bay regions. A Chenin Blanc would work as well. From the Vouvray region in France. Or go for a South African one, some of the Chenin’s from old vines are of excellent quality there.
As I kept this wild rice and vegetables very minimalistic, which works absolutely beautiful by itself, remember often ‘less is more’ is a good rule for recipe development. But of course feel free to add as many flavours you like, and Let me know about your creations, in comments below, or on Instagram. Don’t forget to add @haricoco1 to your posts. ENJOY!
*NOTE; while updating photos & video I used green beans instead of green peas.
📋 Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 small head of broccoli cut in smaller florets
- 2 courgettes peeled
- 1/2 cucumber peeled
- 125 grams (¾ cups) wild rice, or brown rice
- ½ lemon zest
- ½ lemon juice
- 2 Tablespoons olive oil
- 1 small onion
- 1 spring onion
- 1 handful of parsley
- 1 handful of walnuts
- 150 grams (1 cup) green peas frozen or fresh
- 1/2 tomato
- 1/4 red onion
- 1/4 teaspoon red chilli pepper paste
- 5 drops of Tabasco
- 2 Tablespoons of any nut oil or sesame oil
- salt and pepper
Instructions
- Preparation of vegetables; Cut broccoli in florets, peel courgette, peel cucumber, crumble walnuts in slightly smaller pieces.
- Grate the courgette and cucumber (I used the grater of the magi-mix, quick and easy) Put it in a bowl.
- Add the lemon zest, lemon juice, 1 tablespoon of olive oil, and salt and pepper to the bowl with courgette and cucumber, and set aside for minimum 20 minutes so the flavours can infuse.
- Boil the rice, as mentioned on the package.
- Steam the broccoli, approx. 5 -7 minutes until it’s just done (test by pricking it with a fork), but still has a bit of a crunch. – COOL the broccoli straight away with running cold water , or water with ice cubes (to stop the cooking process and keep the colour)
- Toast the walnuts , till they release their oils, and fragrant.
- Cut the onion in medium large pieces and soften in a pan (just soft and transparent, not browned)
- Meanwhile make your salsa, by chopping up tomato and finely chop a bit of red onion, add some olive oil, salt, pepper, chilli paste, and a little bit of Tabasco for the hot acidity.
- When rice is boiled, cool it under cold running water, and drain so the rice doesn’t go soggy. When cooled, add it to the onions in the pan, add the peas, and warm everything gently in low heat (don’t fry the rice).
- Add carefully the steamed broccoli to the rice so it slightly warms up again.
- Finely the nut oil or sesame oil and parsley, spring onion and toasted walnuts to the pan.
- For plating; Drain the salad well, by pressing as much liquid out as possible. add some of the hot salsa around it (amount to your own liking). And add the rice and vegetable mixture. You can decorate with some extra green leaves, extra parsley, or sprinkle extra walnuts.
