in the kitchen: neomonde in romania

David and I have a favorite middle eastern restaurant in Raleigh called Neomonde.  With fresh pita,  falafel, tabouli, hummus, moussaka and so many spicy tasty salads, who wouldn’t like it?  Last Lent, on a Friday, we went Neomonde, so we were being vegetarian.  Of course tomato and cucumber salad was on the list and hummus and pita are a given.  The server suggested I try mjadarah — a dish with lentils, rice, and carmelized onions.  And I fell in love with it.

While going through the ever-changing stock at our teeny-tiny grocer, I saw bags of lentils and I had a flashback to Neomonde.  We always have rice around and I usually keep an onion (hidden from David, of course).  So mjadarah was on our menu.  With some baked chicken and some spiced up fasole batut (beaten beans), we’d have ourselves a Neomonde-esque meal in the dead of a Romanian winter.  And that we did.

The mjadarah recipe I used can be found here at allrecipes.  I did use chicken cubes when cooking the lentils and the rice and I added some cumin to the mix.  Topped with the carmelized onions and some Romanian sour cream, it was tastiness.

NB: When I made this, I added a little extra lentils and a little extra rice, thinking the measurements seemed skimpy.  I shouldn’t have because we’ll be eating these leftovers FOREVER!!