Mujaddara

Lentils and rice cooked together, topped with a generous mound of caramelised onions browned slowly in olive oil until they go dark and sweet. Sometimes finished with cumin or allspice. The Lebanese peasant dish: humble, deeply flavoured, vegetarian, with the long-cooked onion sweetness as the defining signal against the earthy lentil and the pillowy rice. Sweet-savoury rather than herbal, earthy rather than bright.