Domenica Marchetti is a food writer, recipe developer and cooking teacher who specializes in seasonal Italian home cooking and the author of The Glorious Soups and Stews of Italy. Visit her web site at www.domenicacooks.com. You can find more of her recipes here.

I have always been a white rice person. I grew up on Arborio, the starchy, short-grain Italian rice used to make risotto. My mother also used Arborio in rice croquettes, rice salads, and in soups.

The only other rice we cooked with was plain long-grain rice, which doesn’t have much to recommend it in the way of flavor (or nutrition for that matter) but is perfectly good simmered in chicken broth with a little butter and served alongside a juicy roasted chicken.

When I started cooking on my own, I tried and fell in love with fragrant, long-grain rice varieties such as basmati and jasmine, which took the place of plain long-grain rice in my kitchen. Until very recently, however, I never felt the need to further broaden my rice repertoire.

No doubt this has to do with the fact that my few, early encounters with brown and wild rice were less than encouraging. These varieties took slightly longer than forever to cook, and yielded something that was sort of chewy, sort of mushy, and not that appealing. They weren’t obedient; they didn’t fluff properly.

I honestly can’t say what prompted me to take a new look at the more exotic members of the rice family. I suppose it’s not unusual for someone who loves to cook to have an occasional epiphany, to look at a once-snubbed ingredient with fresh eyes and new interest. This has happened to me before over the years with lamb, rutabaga, cilantro and sprouts, among other things.

All I know is that one day I came home from the organic supermarket with a big bag of a blend of brown and wild rice, and for the first time, the mix of shapes and hues, from pale brown to red to black, looked appetizing.

I read up on brown and wild rice, and found out that brown rice and white rice are the same grain. The only difference is that brown rice is processed less, so that only the inedible hull is removed; the bran and the germ remain. That is why it is more nutritious than white rice.

Like white rice, brown rice varies in shape, size, and texture, from short and squat to long and tapered, from sticky to dry. The many colors that you see in a brown rice mix are simply a reflection of the color of the bran, which can range from red to purple to black, depending on the variety. Red-hued Wehani and black Japonica are two examples of brown rice. These varieties are often marketed as “wild rice blends” such as the one I bought, but they are not wild rice.

Wild rice is not rice at all, but rather the seed of an aquatic grass native to the upper Midwest and Canada. True wild rice is still harvested the way Native Americans have done it for centuries — in canoes and using two rice beater sticks to knock mature seeds into the bottom of the boat. It is expensive — upwards of $6 a pound. Nowadays, there is also cultivated wild rice, which comes mostly from California.

My bag of rice turned out to be mostly brown varieties — long grain brown, sweet brown, Wehani, and black Japonica, with some wild rice thrown in for good measure. Rather than follow a recipe, I decided to be bold and let intuition guide me as I looked at the pretty mix of shapes and colors. Soup, I decided, with mushrooms and spring onions.

At the last minute I elected to toss in some shredded escarole as well. This tough, somewhat bitter green turns mellow and faintly nutty-tasting when cooked, a good match for the rice, I figured. Its pulpy texture adds body to soups.

I’m not sure whether it is I or the quality of rice that has changed over the years, but from the first spoonful I was smitten, and I suspect that over time the untamed appeal of wild rice will push the obedient white stuff to the back of the pantry.

Recipe: Wild Rice Soup With Porcini And Escarole (Domenica Marchetti)

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