Mejadra (from Jerusalem: A Cookbook)

I guess my love of onions--fried, thank you, is what brought me to this dish. The basic components of the meal are lentils and rice. Don't underestimate what you can do with these two mandatory vegan kitchen ingredients. Paired with coriander seed, cumin seed, cinnamon, allspice and turmeric--and what you have is an incredibly flavorful dinner. 

I had no idea how much I missed fried onions. I was scooping up handfuls of the things as they came out of the pot faster than I could make them, then cursing myself for doing so because this just meant my cooking time kept getting extended. 

Maybe I should just come clean here and say the whole onion frying experience reminded me of my mother's liver and onion nights. Yes. This was a childhood staple growing up. Suffice it to say, it's a lost childhood memory now. And thank god.

 Our mother had a thing for onions. Pearled onions. (Save some for grandma's martini.) Onion rings. (Sliced and with nearly all meals.) Green onions. (Served straight. She'd eat these as a snack--dredged in salt.) That was it. When she'd get around to cooking onions--the whole house smelled like a burger bar for days. Not that that's a bad thing, but it can take a while to get the whole liver/onion thingy out of the air. Trust me. To this day, I really can't be around anything that remotely smells like cooked liver and onions. At all.

But the onions--just onion frying, that's another story.  

I have both of the Yotam Ottolenghi's cookbooks, Plenty and Jerusalem--and I love them. I've made recipes from both and nothing has disappointed. Several of the dishes are going into our regular rotation. Mejadra will be one of those. (The link takes you to the recipe.) Mejadra is a comfort food in other parts of the world. It's a comfort food here now, too. I adored this dish. 

 As a meal, it is completely filling. I'd highly recommend using sweet onions. As a second day leftover, we stuffed the lentil and rice and what was left of our onions in a pita and made sandwiches. Super delicious, the lentils and rice even more flavorful from their overnight fridge time. 

Just set aside a little extra time for the fried onion prep part. I had to do mine in several batches (because of the "snacking problem" I was having).

I made a sauce of horseradish, vegan mayo and fresh lemon juice to serve over it. Super yummy.