Wild rice

Fat bird, roasted seed. Both taste of the same parched-marsh smoke.

Tannic sour against roasty bitter: the Great Lakes larder in one bowl.

The seed is bone dry and tea-bitter. Fat is not optional here.

Two roasted things sharing pyrazines and both a bit tannic.

Resin herb survives the forty-minute simmer that kills anything softer.

Stuff the cavity: nutty grain, edible bowl, no plate needed.

Apricot-scented fungus lifts the smoky seed off the ground.

Same region, same season. The sugar makes the bitterness legible.

Lean iron meat with a grain that already tastes of woodsmoke.

Long-braised fat needs something with tannin under it to stop the sag.

Earth on earth. The chew keeps the shavings from sliding off.

Both are roasted grass seeds. Brew the rice water and taste the overlap.

Shared pyrazines and shared bitterness. Popped in fat it reads as cocoa nib.