Locomotoring

Last November, in honor of Native American Heritage month, I ended up buying manoomin from Bineshii. I am not fond of cultivated wild rice but chef Sean Sherman can be particularly inspiring and I was inspired to explore wild wild rice. Where cultivated wild rice is tough, the foraged manoomin, a true wild rice, is delicate. Manoomin cooks in 15 minutes and its aroma is the confluence of earth and wood. Around Nov/Dec, when chestnuts and mushrooms can be foraged, and cranberry is star of the festivals, a perfect union is ready to form. See Sherman’s recipe for wild rice pilaf, with mushrooms, chestnuts and cranberries.

I have since ordered my second batch of manoomin from Bineshii.

Bineshii is an American Indian owned family business, with Ojibwa/Ojibwe tribal affiliation, located in Leech Lake Indian Reservation in Northern Minnesota. Manoomin is expensive in absolute terms. When comparing with exceptional rice otherwise available from grocery store, say Lundberg organic Jasmine rice, it is five times more expensive. But consider several factors, before comparing cost. First is wild foraging. In my experience with mushrooms and chestnuts, wild foraged food are often far more concentrated in flavor. I am going to maintain that the flavor comes from the terroir. Wilderness may be about quiet. But it is also about complex interdependent ecosystems where creatures big and small, get an opportunity to co-create a terroir with richer chemicals – something that we can’t reproduce in modern agricultural setup.

The second factor, is the relationship that comes with ancestral tradition, in this case, foraging rice, or ricing. Leah Lemm, MPR news editor, a city bred Ojibwe native, and the protagonist of “Finding Manoomin: A Search for the Spirit of Wild Rice” on her first ever ricing experience notices “there is memory here, almost like déjà vu, […] through your ancestors”. Leah goes on her ricing trip with Pat Kruse, a well renowned birchwork and quillwork artist and cultural teacher. Pat says he would “die of grief if he couldn’t go ricing”. Ricing is not my relationship but there is no reason why I can’t honor heartfelt relationships of others.

I once was naive enough to bring traditional rice from India, it had ended up on the incinerator belt at the San Francisco international airport.

Third factor is the fact that industrial rice isn’t great for glycemic response and needs to be hacked prior to consumption (resistant starch, addition of oils etc.). If one is eating little rice, as I am prone to these days, a few ounces go a long way. I know that foraging does not feed the planetary population. However, nourishment of soul is another matter altogether. Bineshii manoomin feeds my soul in the form of wild foraged mushroom pilaf flavored with concomitant herbs like bay leaves, juniper berries, wild ramp, sumac and fir salt. The leftover rice water, left after cooking the rice, is delicious in broths and porridges.