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Lentils with Rice
Boil the lentils as directed in the preceding recipe. Wash one cup of rice, throw it into a large kettle of boiling water and boil rapidly thirty minutes. Drain it in a colander and stand it at the oven door ten or fifteen minutes to dry. Each grain must be swollen, white and free from all stickiness. Put two tablespoonfuls of butter into a frying pan, when melted add one onion cut into thin slices. When the onion is golden brown add the lentils and rice, stir over the fire fifteen minutes, season with salt and pepper; serve very hot. 1/2 cup of lentils,
A plain mujaddara-style dish from a period when rice was boiled like pasta. Two of the timings need adjusting; the rest holds up.
- The rice timing is the hingeThirty minutes of rapid boiling will reduce most modern long-grain rice to mush. In a large pot of salted boiling water, basmati or another long grain needs about 10-12 minutes, plain long-grain white about 13-15, drained the moment the grains are tender but still distinct.
- Drying the riceThe instruction to drain and stand it at the oven door is doing real work: it drives off surface moisture so the grains stay separate in the pan. A colander set over the still-warm stovetop, or five minutes in an oven turned off after use, achieves the same thing.
- The preceding recipeNot reproduced here; presumably the lentils are simmered in water until tender and drained. Brown or green lentils take 20-30 minutes; red lentils will collapse and are the wrong choice here. Half a cup dry yields roughly 1 1/4 cups cooked.
- QuantitiesThe trailing "1/2 cup of lentils" appears to be the ingredient note for this recipe, printed after the method. Against one cup of rice, the proportion is rice-heavy.
- Fifteen minutes in the panOnce rice and lentils are combined with the onion, five to eight minutes over moderate heat is enough to heat through and take on the butter. A full quarter hour risks scorching the bottom unless the heat is very low.
- SeasoningSalt and pepper alone is austere for modern palates. The dish takes cumin, coriander or a squeeze of lemon well, all of which are traditional in its Middle Eastern relatives, though none appear here.
- YieldServes three to four as a side, two as a main.
Rice and lentils cooked together and finished with fried onion is one of the oldest and most widespread cheap dishes in the world, known as mujaddara across the Levant, koshari in Egypt in a more elaborate form, and mujaddara or kitchari-adjacent variants further east. The instruction to boil rice hard in a great deal of water and then dry it is the standard English-American method of the day, aimed at avoiding the sticky, porridge-like rice that was considered a fault. The onion browned in butter is the only flavouring the recipe allows itself, and it is the same element that carries the dish in its older forms.