Recipe Hall of Fame: Lentils and Rice with Yogurt

There's a certain obsession on social media with "student food", which is frequently used as a term for food that essentially fulfills three criteria: any idiot can make it, you can afford it if you're broke and it doesn't taste like crap. Bonus points if it's healthy. This popularity makes sense: a lot of young people (who are the main audience for these videos) don't have much experience cooking, grocery prices keep rising¹ and good food can be a distraction from the perpetual misery in which we Zoomers tend to find ourselves these days.

Unfortunately, "good, easy, cheap" is a tough combination to nail. Much like "good, fast, cheap" in engineering, it is usually a "pick two" kind of situation. If it's easy and cheap, it's probably not good; if it's cheap and good, it's probably not easy.

Sometimes though, when the stars align, you find a recipe that gets the balance right. One that meets all the "student food" criteria and, at the same time, doesn't get boring. When that happens, I like to write it down and share it with others. I suppose that is what I'm doing here now in a somewhat more elaborate form. So, join me (or don't) as I present the first entry in my personal "recipe hall of fame".

The dish

The original recipe that inspired this post comes from Yotam Ottolenghi and is called "Mejadra". It was reposted to a German DIY blog where my father found it. He showed it to me in a simplified version, which I then took and adjusted a bit more myself. I now make this almost on a weekly basis.

At its core, this dish is really just what it says in the title: lentils, rice and yogurt. You cook the lentils, you cook the rice together with the lentils and some spices, and you eat the result with yogurt. However, there is plenty room for creativity: you can add and change spices and herbs, add garlic and onions (fried, like in the original, or cooked with the rice) or make the yogurt more interesting by combining it with some other things. Below, I will list two "tiers" of ingredients for this dish: one, what I consider to be the minimum requirements and two, what I use when I make it. In the instructions, I will use my extended list, but you can just skip over any parts you omit.

Apart from being good, easy and cheap, here are some more things that make this dish great:

• It's made up of easily available ingredients that last. Rice, lentils and most spices keep forever, so as long as you have those somewhere, you only really need yogurt and limes which can also survive for quite a bit.
• It requires practically no prep. No time-consuming cutting, no separate pots, ...
• It's vegetarian.
• It's pretty nutritious - it provides carbohydrates, protein and fiber.

The only "downside" to this recipe is that it's not done within 15 minutes (which is another property that makes online recipes more clickable²) – from start to finish, it takes around 50 minutes, though the vast majority of it is spent waiting rather than working.

Ingredients

The quantities below yield 2 portions.

At the very least (struggle meal tier), you'll need:

• 125g brown or green lentils
• 100g rice
• 175ml water (or stock if you want to go the extra mile)
• olive oil
• spices
  • the original recipe lists coriander seeds, cumin, turmeric, allspice, cinnamon
  • for simplicity, I recommend just going with an off-the-shelf 'ras el hanout' spice mix - they're all different, but most mixes will contain the spices above
  • just watch out for what else they contain, e.g. the one I currently use also has a lot of black pepper so I don't add any separate pepper.
• salt and pepper
• 150g greek yogurt
• juice of half a fresh lime (or just lemon juice)

And here's what I add when I make it:

• 1 onion
• some harissa (Maghrebi chili paste)
• herbs (basil, parsley, oregano, thyme, rosemary)
  • I use a "meditarrenean garlic-herb mix" from Germany that I got as a gift. It contains dried herbs, garlic and onions as well as salt and pepper.
• fried onions (as a topping)
  • in the original "Mejadra", you make them yourself – I just use store-bought ones
• For the yogurt, in addition to the lime juice I mix in:
  • white pepper
  • cayenne pepper
  • garlic powder
  • olive oil
  • the original also adds cucumbers, but I'm too lazy for that
• raisins (after the rice is done cooking)³

How cheap is this?

Mainly for fun, but also because I'm personally curious, I tried calculating how much this dish costs per portion. I can only speak for my place of residence and the present time of course, but it could be interesting nonetheless. So, here are the quantities in which I usually get these ingredients and their current best prices at one of the supermarkets I regularly shop at (REWE⁴).

• 500g Pardina lentils: 2.29€
• 1kg rice (Jasmine): 2.69€
• 750ml extra virgin olive oil: 6.99€
• 4×150g greek yogurt: 1.19€
• 33g ras el hanout: 1.99€
• 4 limes: 1.49€

I think estimating that we'll use 6g of ras el hanout and 30ml olive oil per making is generous enough. Dividing these prices according to the quantities in the recipe then, we end up with ~0.98€ per serving. Let's just round this to 1€, which should hopefully account for a little bit of salt and pepper. I dare say... in this economy? 1€ is a pretty good price for a meal.

Instructions

One small pot with a lid, a strainer and a clean kitchen towel or something else you can use to steam the whole thing at the end is all you need.

1. Put the lentils in the pot, cover well with water and bring to a boil.
2. Simmer lentils for 12 minutes on low heat with the lid on.
3. Strain out lentils and wipe down the pot.
4. Add olive oil to the pot and sauté the onion (chopped roughly into chunks) until softened.
5. Add some harissa and fry it for a minute.
6. Add the rice, stir and coat it well in olive oil, spices and herbs.
7. Add back the lentils, mix, then add the water/stock.
8. Let it simmer covered on low heat for 15 minutes.
9. Turn off the heat and put the kitchen towel between pot and lid. Let it sit for another 10 minutes.
10. Serve with the spiced yogurt, which you can then mix in and top with fried onions.

The first time I made this, I was worried that 175ml was not enough water. But trust me, even if it doesn't cover everything, it will be enough. Generally, it's better for this dish to have too little water rather than too much water since you get additional moisture from the yogurt and you really don't want soggy rice or mushy lentils.