Symphony of Blah

Once upon a time, I worked in a bookstore. Gordon's Booksellers at the Rotunda, to be exact. (Anyone remember that store?) I made something like $3.35 an hour and almost all of it went towards buying books. One book I purchased was Southwest Tastes, from the PBS TV series "Great Chefs of the West," pretty much solely for the recipe "Wild Rice Pancakes Garnished in Two Ways." I have owned this book for 20 years and only just now have gotten around to making the recipe, although I had contemplated it from time to time. But there was leftover wild rice in the fridge that was begging to be used in some interesting way. A shame that didn't happen.

One of the two toppings was chicken in a sherry vinegar sauce. I opted to use leftover roast chicken instead of the raw chicken in the recipe, plus onion and - you guessed it - mushrooms.

Is that ugly, or what? And despite the three fat cloves of garlic, 4 scallions, and about 1/4 cup of impossibly strong sherry vinegar, the dish didn't taste like all that much. And the pancakes were rather bizarre - the rice just floated in it, like chocolate chips in a cookie. Try for yourself - see if it works better for you.

Wild Rice Pancakes (adapted from Southwest Tastes)

2 cups cooked wild rice

2 eggs

2 tablespoons chopped scallions

2 teaspoons minced garlic

1/3 cup AP flour

1/2 cup milk

salt and pepper to taste

Mix rice, eggs, scallions, and garlic in a bowl. Add flour, milk, and salt and pepper. The original recipe calls for melting butter in a skillet, but I used PAM on a pancake griddle. Spoon on batter to make approximately 3"-4" pancakes. Cook until the top starts to look dry and the bottoms are golden. Flip and cook a few more minutes until that side browns as well. Keep warm until ready to use.

---------------------------------------------

Oh well. The cookbook is otherwise pretty.