Mujaddara
You may have noticed some silence as of late, on flavorfull. For that, I am truly sorry. I won't bore you with my long list of excuses because, mostly, the excuses amount to me getting home at 8 or 9 and feeling very tired and incapable of cooking, photographing and writing about a meal. A lot of times I'm quite tempted to simply order Thai food again from the place around the corner. (A lot of times, I give into that temptation, too.)
I felt, at first, ashamed to admit this, given my love for cooking. But then I thought, it's possible that my readers wish they could cook more too. I mean, I cannot be the only girl in the world who loves to cook but consistently sees gourmet groceries go bad in her fridge. So, with that in mind (and just in case you've struggled with something similar) let me offer you my new favorite pantry staple recipe.
This meal is made with almost all things you can keep in your pantry, so if all of your ingredients go bad during a busy week or you're so busy you can't find time to go grocery shopping for proper produce you can still eat very, very well. Mujaddara also gets better with a little time, so it's ideal to make this on a Sunday and bring it to work as lunch on, say, a Tuesday. Plus, when paired with steamed green veggies, it's a very nutritious meal.
Mujaddara
Adapted by Alexandra Rogers from recipe on Food52.com
Ingredients
3/4 cup green or brown lentils
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup brown rice
2 Tablespoons butter
3 Tablespoons olive oil
6 cups thinly slice onions (about 3 medium onions)
Recipe
Cook rice and lentils according to instructions, set aside.
Divide onions in half. Heat oil in a large saute pan, and add half of the sliced onions once the oil is hot. Cook onions over medium low heat for 10-15 minutes, until caramelized (adding oil in small amounts if pan dries out). Repeat process with second batch of onions (alternatively, if you have two large saute pans you can do this step at once on two burners).
In a large bowl, combine rice, lentils and onions and stir to combine. Serves 4.
This looks delicious, but -and perhaps I'm an idiot and totally missing something- I'm not seeing the part in the recipe where you make the sauce. You explain that you should divide the onions in half, but you don't explain what should be done with the second batch of onions that is any different from the first. Do you add butter or cream and puree them into a sauce? Or do you just, for no clear reason, have two sets of the same onions? Sorry, I don't mean to be obnoxious, but I want to be able to make this and have it be good, and it looks like the recipe is missing something! Please let me know!
ReplyDeleteThanks.