David R. MacIver's Blog

Pseudo-malaysian rice and lentils

I’ve not been feeling in the mood for experimenting recently, so I haven’t been updating the blog. I feel a bit bad about this, so I thought I’d do something simpler and share one of my ‘standard’ recipes. It won’t be as interesting to read, but its definitely interesting to eat.

This is my version of a malaysian rice dish that someone once cooked for me. He didn’t give me the full recipe, and what he did give me of it is only really approximated in this. I’ve also made my own modifications since.

It’s a nice, relatively easy, rice dish with a great flavour to it. It’s yet another of my flings with mixing sweet, savoury and spicy and I think it does a marvelous job of it. The only reason I would not recommend this recipe to someone is if they don’t like coconut.

The ingredients of this one are a bit vague - I just improvise it with whichever of the fresh spices, etc. I have to hand, so it comes out somewhat different every time.

Ingredients

A couple tbsp of sunflower oil.
2 cups rice
1 cup green lentils
2 or 3 sweet peppers (different colours by preference)
4 or 5 carrots
About a dozen medium sized mushrooms

2 medium red onions
2 red chillies
3 small cloves of garlic
About 5cm of stem ginger
Half of a stick of fresh lemongrass
1 cup dessicated coconut

1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp fresh cumin
1/2 tsp cardamon
2 or 3 cm cinnamon

Instructions

Cook the rice and lentils until the rice is dry and the lentils are just on the hard side of cooked.

Meanwhile, lightly toast the cumin, cardamon and cinnamon (tearing the cinnamon up into little bits first), crush them and stick them in the food processor. Add the salt, sugar, onions, garlic, chillies, ginger, coconut and lemongrass. Pulse until they are very finely chopped and thoroughly mixed.

Chop the carrots into small cubes (a bit under a cm on a side), the peppers up into mediumish sized squares and slice the mushrooms thinly.

Heat the oil in a wok or frying pan and add the onion, etc. mix to it. Fry it for about 5-10 minutes, then add the carrots and after another 5 minutes the peppers, and then the mushrooms. Fry until the carrots are no longer crunchy but still not fully cooked, then add the rice and lentils. Continue frying until the rice/lentil mix is fully coated and the carrots are cooked (I use the simmering oven to finish the cooking when I have the aga).

This is better served hot of course, but it’s actually quite nice cold. Also, I usually serve this with a salad to complement it.