Hella Stella

By popular demand, the lentil recipe I was raving about. It's from the lovely Orangette, and she goes into lots of detail on her post.

By the way, this dish looks like hell. Seriously... It's not a pretty bowl of lentils. It looks like slop. Obviously the taste is amazing, but if you have a picky partner or family, take Orangette's advice and gussy your plate up with a nice green salad on the side.

Some tweaks:

I know that the proper way to carmelize onions is to let them cook a long long time until they are brown and sweet. HOWEVER. Allow me to propose a cheat, if you will, that could save you some time and not sacrifice any flavour. Instead of cooking the onions for a million years, I cook them until they are very soft, maybe twenty minutes, and then I sprinkle a small amount of sugar on them. For my giant cast iron pan full of onions, I used about half a teaspoon of sugar (and the sugar I used was that light brown organic stuff, because that's what I had). Then I turn up the heat a bit and watch the onions carmelize at super speed. Keep stirring to make sure the sugar doesn't burn. It's a great trick, and the onions taste like heaven when they are all perfectly browned.

Another tweak.... I adore short grain brown rice, and that's what I used instead of basmati. Be warned if you go this route: you will need about four times the water, and it will take well over an hour for everything to soak up. If that seems too long for you, go with basmati and you'll have a delicious dish in no time. If you are a brown rice addict like me, it's worth the extra time.