Improvised Mujadara

Mujadara is a Lebanese recipe, often made for Friday Lenten dinners. The recipe I’m writing won’t be used for any Lenten Friday night though, since it calls for a cup and a half of chicken broth. Sure, you can use veggie broth for a Friday night or a vegetarian meal, but all I had in my pantry was chicken, so there you are. This has a few extra ingredients from your basic Mujadara.

Ingredients:

• 1 C dry brown or green lentils
• 1 C brown rice (The basic recipe calls for the rice to be washed and soaked… I play things a little more fast and loose and just washed the rice)
• 2 C water
• 1 1/2 C chicken broth (or vegetable broth)
• 1 medium yellow onion, chopped fine
• 1 medium yellow onion, sliced lengthwise.
• 1/4 C olive oil (you can use canola instead, but know that this is sacrilege)
• 1 1/2 t salt and pepper (if you can, use sea salt–trust me, it tastes better)
• 1 t ground coriander
• 1 T minced garlic
• 1 t dry garlic
• 1 large carrot, peeled and chopped coarse

Wash your lentils. Look for any rejects (there will be a few), pick them out and wash again. This will remove any remaining “grit” from your dried lentils. Wash them a final time, drain out most of the water, then let the lentils sit in the bowl. Wash and drain the brown rice and add it to the bowl with the lentils.

Get a pot ready with the water and chicken broth and put it on the stove (on high) to start warming up. Add the lentils and brown rice, a pinch of salt, and stir.

Heat up the oil in a saute pan. Once the oil is hot (it will slide around the pan readily, like water), add the onions. When the onions are translucent, add the chopped carrots and minced garlic. Saute the vegetables until the onions are caramelized (golden brown, fairly see-through), then add the whole thing to the pot of lentils and rice. Stir that pot again.

Once the pot of lentils and rice is simmering, reduce the heat to medium-low and stir whenever you think of it. This is a fairly low maintenance recipe–about every ten minutes or so, give the pot some love and go on about your business. When the liquid in the pot is reduced to look like a gravy, add in the dried garlic, some more salt and some pepper to taste, and the ground coriander. Let the whole thing simmer until the lentils and the rice are soft, then take it off the heat entirely.

Since I cook this recipe as a “make-ahead”, I let it cool down a little bit and then put it into separate takeaway containers and pop those in the fridge. If you’re cooking this for a meal, let it cool a bit before you put it on the plates–it will be hot! If you like, you can get adventurous and try a little lemon juice on top of your serving, add a little parsley, or even a little cheese. Whatever you do, enjoy it–this is a hearty dish and will keep you warm with the blanket of snow we have on top of us at the moment.