Steemit Iron Chef 2018 Act 01 Round 06 : Mushroom Wild Rice with (veggie) sausage and miso-glazed carrots

OK! For this week of the Steemit Iron Chef contest, the theme ingredient is "the local product you will choose"!

I live in the northmost USA, in a state called Minnesota. In this state, our automobile license plates all declare "land of 10000 lakes" though in actual fact, there are more than 12000! Seriously, this place is lousy with lakes! Up north, especially, the shores of all those lakes are choked with Northern Wild Rice. This grass roots under water, and stalks grow up out of the water, sometimes just a tiny bit and sometimes two meters above the surface. And like normal grasses, flowers and then seed-heads form at the top of the plant. Minnesota isn't the only place this grows, but we're proud of it and it's a distinctly up-north ingredient. Historically it was an important food for the Native Americans in this region and much of the Wild Rice harvest is still managed by the tribes. This historic image from Wikimedia shows natives harvesting Wild Rice by bending the stalks over and whacking the seeds off into the bottom of the boat:

For more of the interesting history see Wikipedia!

You can get Wild Rice around here in three basic grades: cracked -- in which most of the pieces are broken (it still tastes OK, but the texture suffers); whole -- where the grains are unbroken but it is harvested by machine; and hand harvested -- where the most care is given to get the best grains, skipping plants that aren't at their peak. I got the latter, more expensive one for this dish. Here's what the grains look like before cooking:

In my family, we make two different dishes with Wild Rice. A soup with shredded mushrooms and a saute with mushrooms. I decided to make the latter and fancy it up a little so it wouldn't just be a side.

As usual, I started by getting out a palette of ingredients that I thought I'd want:

I also used honey, garlic and gochujang, and didn't end up using the bell pepper, but this was a good starting point.

I boiled the rice with salt and bay. I glazed the carrots in miso and honey. I halved and then fried the veggie-sausage in 'planks'. I sauteed the onions and mushrooms in butter, then mixed in the rice with some veggie broth and let it simmer down.

Then I just had to put it together! I served it with a puddle of gochujang, some flat-leaf parsley, and a light shred of Parmesan cheese. The umami in parm, marries especially well with the rest of the dish. The gochujang provides a bright flavor contrast and the fresh herb does the same thing in the visual aspect of the otherwise very brown dish.