Field and Fen

I was reminded of this today when my inbox had a recipe from Melissa Name Escapes Me, nyt food writer, with a kind of simplified version of mejadra.

I tried this, the real thing, a couple of years ago when I first heard of Ottolenghi,  at the Bite Club, local library cookbook book group. Led by a great cook also a reference librarian, Dee Whitman.

Ottolenghi is not a simplifier. But the results are wonderful. So I thought hm. All the ingredients, more or less, in the house. Around here to think is to act.



You'll see from the full page of ingredients and instructions that this is not fast food. You pretty much have to adopt the attitude of those old ladies of his childhood, spending all day in the kitchen, waving away hungry kids wanting to know if it's ready, it smells so good.



So here we go. I didn't have Basmati, subbed jasmine brown, didn't have yogurt, ignored it, didn't have allspice, likewise. I did grind the cinnamon stick fresh, -- you did know the cheap cinnamon you get at the supermarket isn't the real thing,  just a poor relation? -- and the black pepper. Didn't have green nor brown lentils, subbed red, added in yellow split peas to make up the amount.

Aside from these adjustments it was exactly the same.. moving right along. It's really a lovely long adventure of the senses with all the ingredients, and grinding the spices, cooking the lentils, then the onions in batches till golden and crisp, then all the other stuff.





Nothing exotic in the ingredients, just the way you use them.

About the cinnamon, I found a source for mine, and the sticks are so much more aromatic and easy to break than supermarket ones. Real southern cooks use them. It's botanically C. Zeylanicum, Ceylon cinnamon. If the world ever gets back on its axis you might fancy trying it.

With Ottolenghi's recipes, you slow down and get into a calm frame of mind. Full disclosure: there was a slight oil burn, but the aloe plant right in the kitchen took care of that.

I saved out the olive oil from cooking the onions, used some of it as a base for the next stage, the toasting of the spices, saved the rest in the fridge for use soon when I fancy onion-flavored oil, probably for soup.



And it's an amazingly good meal, soft along with firm and crunchy, spicy but not blow your head off.  There's enough for several more meals, heat n eat. Future fast food.

If you'd rather do anything than be this involved with a meal, I can still recommend the cookbook, also "Plenty" by the same people.

 It's a book of history, culture, geography, botany, as well as food. The photography alone is worth studying. I rarely buy cookbooks, but this is different.

 It's a middle Eastern education in food. And in herbs and spices, using then generously. None of your eighth of a tsp of this, a smidgen of that. Armloads is more like it. Lentils, rice, chickpeas, can take a lot of flavoring. Boldly go ahead, is the idea.

Not a bad policy in general, come to think of it.

The more I cook from the Ottolenghi books, the more I realize that the dishes are well worth the effort since the recipes are big enough for about six meals!  so one big mise en scene, the larger stage into which you do the mis en place, gives me a week's dinners. See what happens when I send away for ze French lentilles, zey come wiz ze language prompts. And, to get back to English,  includes enough to share with friends.



 
 Mejadra has a number of different English versions of the spelling depending on what language you're coming from, but is definitely a widely known Middle Eastern dish, and I can see why.



It's a wild mixture of basmati rice, green lentils (I actually sent away for these, no green ones available here, from France, just bragging) yellow onions and tons of spices, and all takes place in one pot.  You boil the lentils first and have them wait in the wings, while you fry the onions in three batches, there's a lot.

You spend ages doing the onions (this is where a lot of those onions I got the other day for the yellow skins for dyeing, went)  to crispish, then wipe the pan and do the cooked lentils and raw rice and various spices and water, then lid it and simmer for a while, then unlid, cover it with dishtowel (yes, he does say a clean one, what did he THINK we were going to use, but I digress) then lid it again over the towel, and leave it alone for a while before serving.

In my case, in the big dish a friend gave me because his family never uses it.  Chef O. has made me use it about twice a week!




Anyway, here it is, and very filling and all that, interesting crisp and chewy and spicy, but  not very.  Some people might add a dash of salt, I'm light on salt. It's funny to eat, because the first forkful is okay, not very exciting, then as you continue your mouth gets filled with the flavors and you realize you're going to have trouble stopping!

Not much cleanup, either, all done in the 15 minutes of waiting for the rice to finish.  This is a feature chefs never seem to put in the recipe: how many pots, pans, knives, spoons, ladles, wrenches, forks and mops the cook might need before she's done.