Sometimes you just don’t know what to cook. There’s an odd combination of foods in the house, or you really just don’t feel like pasta again, or there’s something you could make, but it would just take too long…and in these cases, if you’re anything like me, you just start throwing things together and hope it turns out well. Last night was one of those nights, and though I had a few ideas brewing, I had no idea how they’d come together. Fortunately, what came of my confused kitchen was this:
My primary inspiration for this dish was the Lentils and Rice served at a place called Mediterranean Cuisine in Nashville, which are beyond delicious. I wanted to cook the lentils and rice together in a garlicky, lemony broth, but this posed something of a challenge, given their different cooking times. Making things slightly more complicated was the fact that Josh wanted to incorporate some TVP for extra protein, which immediately made me think of one of my old childhood-in-the-South favorites, Dirty Rice. Fortunately, both Dirty Rice and Lebanese Lentils-and-Rice are variations on a pilaf, so I figured there would be some way to bring the two together.
After some seat-of-my-pants calculations about water content and cooking times, I sauteed some onion and carrots (which I’d chopped up before I decided what to make and included just for good measure, despite the fact that they’re not typically found in either South Louisianian or Lebanese cuisine) in a bit of oil, along with a hefty amount of garlic. I then added the lentils, a little cumin, a pinch of cinnamon and a good amount of salt, plus an equal ratio of water to lentils. I let this boil on its own for about ten or fifteen minutes before adding a cup of rice, another two cups of water, and the juice of half a lemon. While letting this do its covered simmering thing, I got going on the TVP. After rehydrating it with an equal amount of water that had been boiled with a whole garlic clove, I added salt and more lemon juice, plus a bit of pepper.
While we waited for the rice to finish cooking, Josh made a quick flatbread using our pizza stone–and buttermilk!–which turned out really well. Once the rice was done, I added the TVP to the lentil mixture and stirred until it became a Lebanese-Vegetarian-Dirty-Rice feast. I was actually very pleased with the way it turned out: filling and garlicky without being too overwhelming.
That said, I was a little sad not to have any hummus.
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