Wild Rice & Mushrooms Casserole

[kantuckid]

This is "food season" so here goes:

Yesterday I baked my Covid 2020 Fruitcake-looks great too! It's now soaking in syrups and juices on the front porch chilling. 

I just put this casserole together today for our Thanksgiving meal from a NYT's Melissa Clark recipe. She's one of the regular cooks they use for cooking section and has some good ideas now & then. 
FWIW, I find it to be one of their sections that I can tolerate OK... :D

This can be a vegan dish if you adjust ingredients. 
Ingredients: 
1 cup wild rice (I used a Walmart combo rice from a bag that's got a mix of wild, red, two kinds of brown and another)
1 lb of mushrooms-recipe calls for two kinds-I used all portabellas sliced-use what you like!
2-3 Leeks
1/2 C shredded Parmesan cheese
5 oz spinach leaves
1 T tomato paste
dash of red pepper flakes
Broth- 2 cup of chicken, or whatever you like
1/3 cup cilantro fresh
1/3 cup of parsley (I used dried) 
2 1/2 cups Panko bread crumbs
2 cans of cooked white beans ( I used great northerns but would choose Navy beans if cooked from dry beans)
2 T lemon juice & jest from one lemon
garlic cloves (I used only one clove but recipe calls for 3 grated or minced)
1/3 cup olive oil

Steps- 
Cook rice in broth-salt if needed
Sautee the sliced mushrooms  & set aside, sautee the chopped leeks & chopped spinach, garlic minced all in oil.
           Puree the beans with juice-I used a food processor but a blender will work too
Place mushrooms, leeks, spinach mixture in same pan with cooked rice and tomato paste and cilantro & parsley with lemon juice
Place mix in a buttered 9x13 casserole dish. 
Mix the panko, parmesan, 1/3 C olive oil, (garlic if your using more than one clove) and lemon jest in a small bowl.
Preheat oven to 400 deg F 
Place that crumbs mixture on top of the beans, etc., and bake 20 mins covered by foil, remove foil and bake another 20-30 mins, or until golden brown.


One of our son's is a Vegan so he'll probably ignore the chicken broth & cheese and eat this tonite I suspect. He cheats on pizza every Friday when they have Pizza Nite as he eats cheese and pepperoni then. I really like these ingredients and will report how it comes out later. 
Our main dish is home made noodles and chuck roast with some dead baked chicken meat sliced on a plate for the bird people. In the past we've had many table setup but with narrowed things down to only the 10 for this time. Shes aging like me so her brother (widowed, his sons (his kids all have break through covid anyway) and families and one of our sons and family are in AL this year plus wife's Mom & Aunt died so bit smaller meal group. 

Have a good one! 

[barbender]

That sounds goodn Kantuck. If you want the "real" premium wild rice, I believe you can order it from the Leech Lake Band. They have excellent rice, it almost doesn't even taste like the same product. That's because of the way it is processed. A lot of the rice you see is paddy grown and then when they process it they puke it up and allow it to ferment (if your wild rice is dark or black, that's how it was finished). The tribe does there's without piling it, it is a light green/tan color. It cooks in 10-15 minutes and has a much milder flavor.

[sawguy21]

Aw man, now I'm hungry! 8)

[SwampDonkey]

Riese's Lake wild rice harvest in Saskatchewan. ;D

Riese's Canadian Lake Wild Rice - International Edition - YouTube

[kantuckid]

That sounds goodn Kantuck. If you want the "real" premium wild rice, I believe you can order it from the Leech Lake Band. They have excellent rice, it almost doesn't even taste like the same product. That's because of the way it is processed. A lot of the rice you see is paddy grown and then when they process it they puke it up and allow it to ferment (if your wild rice is dark or black, that's how it was finished). The tribe does there's without piling it, it is a light green/tan color. It cooks in 10-15 minutes and has a much milder flavor.

Thanks, but it was a fast choice on my rice. I even thought of your locale when I was thinking about rice, as Deer Lake, WI is sort of wild rice heaven, as is much of WI & MN lake country.
Walmart actually had wild rice but as it was $5+ for a tiny I opted for a wild rice mix.
The dish was VG but if I make it again it's got waaaaay too much Panko bread crumbs on the top! I'd probably skip the panko and use some other crusty crumbs for a topping and far less of them.
I guess wild rice is a great cash crop for Indigenous Peoples? 
As an aside discussion to the rice I bought for my dish- I looked at where it came from which was a family farm in CA. My wife worked with a lady who's KY brother married into a rice & cotton farm family in CA years ago while in the military there. I remember hearing about his "water discussions". It's weird indeed that a state that's water hungry, has subsidized rice & cotton farming! We taxpayers get them the water they need for crops that don't fit at all out there. 

[kantuckid]

Aw man, now I'm hungry! 8)

The home grown "Incredible" variety corn & "Grandpa Bishop" pole beans were my my main event along with real! gravy and mashed taters and real! dressing made into fritters and pan sizzled. We had this pumpkin pie called Fantastic or something like that? It's got a thin layer of cream cheese on the bottom and then pumpkin topped with chopped pecans. My fave holiday pie is called "pumpkin pecan" and has the best of pecan pie (which can be a bit overpowering) and regular pumpkin.  
Our oldest son's GF is with us from Colombia, SA. Spanish this and that being spoken on our mtn in KY. 

[kantuckid]

That sounds goodn Kantuck. If you want the "real" premium wild rice, I believe you can order it from the Leech Lake Band. They have excellent rice, it almost doesn't even taste like the same product. That's because of the way it is processed. A lot of the rice you see is paddy grown and then when they process it they puke it up and allow it to ferment (if your wild rice is dark or black, that's how it was finished). The tribe does there's without piling it, it is a light green/tan color. It cooks in 10-15 minutes and has a much milder flavor.

I've bought it (real stuff) up there when we were on fishing trips. I've also seen them harvesting into small boats on lakes in MN mostly before.  I've been into Deer Lake before- I remember a surplus store I liked on the main drag.