Mujudara has lots of different names - lentils and rice to you
"It must be said that this homely dish doesn’t look very special – just a brown sort of mush. But it is fantastic comfort food – sweet and earthy, and topped with heaps of caramelised onions." Greg Malouf
Yesterday was a David's special meal day and he asked for something with smoked trout. So I searched and found all the usual suspects in varying combinations of ingredients - tarts, risotto, pasta, salad but I wanted to do something different. So I kept on looking and eventually found Jill Dupleix's Mujudara with smoked trout and dill. It had rice - which David loves but it wasn't risotto and it sounded interesting. It also had dill and I knew I had some in the fridge which was getting past it's use by date. Indeed when I came to find it, it had indeed gone completely off. By then we had done the shopping so I substituted fennel from the garden instead. Which was OK but not as flavoursome I think. But by then I was committed and besides it looked lovely.
I love Jill Dupleix's food and the end result here was just fantastic. Although - the onions had to be crisp and yet again I just could not get them crisp. I just ended up almost burning them - and the frying pan in which they cooked. Why oh why can I not cook crispy onions? I always do what they say, and although sometimes I admit I lose patience, on this occasion I did not, as they were cooking whilst I was doing other things. It didn't really matter in the end as they tasted lovely anyway but it would have been a nice visual finish. And I forgot to drizzle the dish with oil as she suggested. Still - a total success and I shall definitely make it again. No good for the fructose intolerant though - there are a lot of onions in there, but good for vegans.
"It may seem strange to stir crisp fried bits into a steaming hot pot of rice, but the lost crunch factor is totally worth it considering the incredible depth of caramelized, salty flavor given over to the rice and beans." Kate Williams - Serious Eats
Which makes me feel a bit of a failure on the onions - but then some of the recipes didn't seem to go for crispy - just caramelised - and some of them cooked them in with the rice and lentils so they wouldn't have been crispy.
Anyway I thought that I would extend my research and find out a bit more about this traditional Lebanese dish, which has so many different spellings throughout the middle east, and even quite different names here and there.
It turns out that it is very ancient. The first written recipe is dated 1226 and is from an ancient cookbook from Iraq. It is said to be the original mess of pottage that Jacob used to buy Esau's birthright and even today it is sometimes called Esau's favourite, though you would have to wonder why it would have been a favourite when it was used to do him out of his inheritance. The word - or the variations thereof mean 'pockmarked' in Arabic, with the lentils in the rice being the pockmarks I suppose.
Originally it was made with meat, but these days it's just lentils and rice and those onions.
Interestingly, my most admired Middle Eastern gurus, Greg Malouf and Claudia Roden - admired because they tend to have researched and are possibly somewhat more 'authentic' - they both have fairly simple recipes - no added spices - just the three crucial ingredients. You can find Greg Malouf's Mjaddarah here and Claudia Roden's Megadarra here. The picture is of Claudia Roden's version.
Jill Dupleix meddled with the original a fair bit. She used tinned lentils (as did I), added some spices - cumin, smoked paprika and cinnamon, dill and of course the smoked trout. Can't imagine smoked trout is a very Middle-Eastern thing though. But it works and she does say that she also sometimes makes it topped with sausage, grilled lamb or zucchini. Really you could top it with anything you liked I guess.
Most of the rest - the 'authentic' and the non-authentic seemed to think that you should serve it with yoghurt - whether plain or flavoured with mint or something similar. Which does make sense.
The main variations that I found, apart from the spelling of the name - there were dozens of these - were the spices that were added, and whether the lentils were cooked with the rice or not. Also when and where you cooked the onions.
So what did I find? Well Yotam Ottolenghi, of course, had a version. It comes from his book Jerusalem, and in fact it is implied that the recipe is actually his co-author's - Sami Tamimi. They call it Mejadra and it looks like this. Crispy onions to the fore!
Jamie Oliver has a go in his Five Ingredients book, although the version I found online was slightly adapted from how it was written because as the author of the article said, the original suggested red lentils which would have just turned to mush, and anyway the picture showed green ones. Jamie just calls it Spiced lentils and rice. It strays a fair bit from the original by adding greens and by being more Indian than Middle-Eastern as it calls for curry paste rather than individual spices. But then the Indians do also cook lentils with rice, although I couldn't actually find a quintessential recipe. This is what the modified Jamie recipe looked like.
In fact I found a few minor disputes about the lentils - brown or puy. One writer said definitely not puy - another said puy was the best as they retained their shape. There were also arguments about the rice - brown, Basmati, jasmine ... A matter of personal taste I think.
On my shelves, but not on the net I found Lentil Rice (Mujaddara) from Michael Rantissi and his Falafel for Breakfast book. He cooks the three basic ingredients separately, spicing the rice with cumin, and then just combines them all at the end, adding lots of chopped parsley and some pine nuts.
And finally one from delicious Magazine which adds lamb chops. It's called Brown rice mujadarra with lamb cutlets. This version has mint, coriander and ras-el-hanout in it - so different again.
Obviously this is one of those classic basic dishes that you can improvise upon to your heart's delight - as long as you stick to lentils, rice and lots of onions. Donna Hay added tomatoes topped nachos with it and then put cheese on top of that and finished under the grill. Quite a way from the original I guess, but then again, maybe not. I think the Latin Americans have various rice and lentil dishes too, so not really a step too far from the original idea. I should investigate that some time.
Three ancient ingredients, dozens and dozens of different names, and potentially endless variations. Do try it - as Greg Malouf says, it's much tastier than it looks, and even better the next day apparently. Which is just as well as I have another meal there. Today I'm going to use it as an accompaniment to some stir fried chicken with Vietnamese mint. It might not work - two very different cuisines being combined here - but I'm going to give it a red hot go. And it won't look as beautifully simple as this.
