“Mujaddrah” is a typical Lebanese dish made with lentils and rice and topped with caremalised onions. It’s something I’ve wanted to make for a while, but as I started to do so, mine evolved into something else with more ingredients in it…I’ve read several versions of the recipes, some with spices and some without, and I used these various recipes as my inspiration, as well as my own ideas for pimping it, when I made this dish, which turned out really tasty, although not that colourful to photograph!
250g green lentils, washed, soaked overnight and cooked as per instructions on the pack
100g quinoa, uncooked
3 red onions, thinly sliced
2 large cloves garlic, roughly chopped
2 medium aubergines, cubed
2tbsp olive oil plus more to drizzle over aubergine
1tsp cumin seeds
1tsp ground cumin
1tsp ground coriander
1/4tsp cayenne pepper
1tsp ras el hanout
Salt to taste
Water as needed
Lemon juice to serve
Heat the oven to 200C, drizzle a little olive oil over the chopped up aubergine and roast for 25-30 minutes until nicely cooked through, then take out and keep to one side until you need them
Heat oil in a wide pan over a medium heat and add the cumin seeds
Cook on their own for a brief time until the pub start to sizzle then add the sliced onions
Cooked them over the medium heat for 10-15 minutes until they start to caremalise and get all lovely
(If you were making Mujaddrah this is when you would remove some of the onions from the pan to save for later to garnish the dish but I forgot to do that for my dish!)
Add the garlic after about 10 minutes and give it a chance to cook without getting burnt
Add the roasted aubergine cubes and all of the spices and stir them all through
Cook together for 2-3 minutes
Add then lentils and again stir through and cook together for a few minutes but don’t let lentils break down
Add the quinoa, stir it in and add 100ml water – you may feel that you want to add a bit more, but don’t overdo it – I used my quinoa cooking method here which is 1:1 ratio of uncooked quinoa:water plus there will be moisture in the pan from the vegetables and this is a good way of soaking some of that up
Bring the pan to the boil and turn down the heat and simmer for 5-6 minutes
Turn off heat, and leave with lid on and allow the steam to finish cooking quinoa
And serve!
I ate mine with a handful of cashews that I’d roasted myself. I also enjoyed it again the next day by heating a portion in a frying pan with some olive oil and added some nuts in at the same time.
Happy Weekend! I hope the partygoers at Fiesta Friday like my dish 🙂