Lebanese dirty rice

Adapted from the New Feast (p. 194-195) by Greg and Lucy Malouf

Some weeks ago I wrote a post about my newest vegetarian cookbook the New Feast by Greg and Lucy Malouf and now I cooked my first dish from it, the Lebanese dirty rice. It's a traditional Middle Eastern dish and I would love to hear from local people (or from people more experienced in this style of cuisine) how you usually make this dish. Please comment in the box below, if you have any experiences with such dishes. And obviously you can also comment, if you don't! The recipe was also published as an edited extract here. First I was very surprised by the lack of different spices, but when I ate the dish I realised that nothing else was needed. This was such a simple and beautiful dish and I think it will become a regular in my kitchen. The fried onions are just amazing!

I made some adjustments according to what was in my cupboard. I replaced the small black lentils with green lentils and the long-grain rice with brown rice. I also added one tablespoon of vegetable stock powder to the lentils when they were cooking. Otherwise I stuck more or less to the original recipe, but the below one is my version of it. I doubled up the ingredient amounts as well as I wanted to have a huge dish (feeds about 4 adults), but feel free to reduce the amounts if you prefer.

Ingredients for the rice

2 onions

4 tbsp olive oil

80 g green lentils

160 g brown rice

1,5 – 2 litres water

1 tsp ground cumin

Dried rose petals for the presentation

Ingredients for the fried onions

2 large onions

6 tbsp cornflour

1 tsp ground cumin

Vegetable oil for deep/shallow frying

Method

Chop the onions for the rice finely and rinse the lentils. Start cooking the chopped onions in the olive oil until soft. Then add the lentils and about one litre water. More water will be added later. Let cook under lid for about 20 minutes until the lentils are almost done.

Then add the rice and little water if needed. Let cook for further 30 minutes. It can take longer with the brown rice. The goal is to cook both very soft so that the lentils stain the rice and make it dirty as described in the title.

In the meanwhile slice the onions for the topping into this strips and soak them for about 15 minutes in salt water. After that drain them well. For the coating mix the cornflour and ground cumin and roll the drained onions in there. Heat vegetable oil in a pan and deep fry the onions until they are crispy.

Serve the rice with the onions and rose petals on the top and enjoy! I found this pheomenal even cold the next day. What a great dish! I'm going to make this again next week, as it's also very cheap and I should always have the ingredients for it in the cupboard.

Have a good week everyone!

Your VegHog