Recipe: Walnut-Rice Stuffing

Walnut-Rice Stuffing
rec.food.cooking/Alex Rast (2001)
Serves 8

I created this initially as a stuffing for turkey. But it works great by itself. Anyway, everyone at Thanksgiving goes nuts (excuse the pun) over this:

2/3 cup brown rice
2/3 cup wild rice
1 lb walnuts, shelled (weight after shelling)
1 1/2 lb crimini mushrooms
5 large stalks celery
10 tbsp butter
3 large sprigs thyme
3 large sprigs sage

Parboil the brown and wild rice in 1 2/3 cups and 2 cups water respectively until tender but not soft. Chop the walnuts into buckwheat-grain-sized pieces.

Bring a skillet to medium heat, melt 2 tbsp of the butter in it and fry the walnuts in the butter until they get a toasty smell. Meanwhile, mince the mushrooms and celery into similarly sized pieces to the walnuts. Strip the leaves off the stems of thyme and discard the stems.

Mince the sage finely and mix celery, mushrooms, sage and thyme in a large bowl. Add the rice and the walnuts.

Cut up the remaining butter in thin slices and either stuff the turkey, interspersing butter slices as you go, or fill a large casserole dish and dot the top with the butter. If using in turkey, cook as per turkey roasting time, if in a casserole dish, bake at 350F for 1 hour.