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Mujadarrah (Jordanian Rice and Lentils)

I borrowed Deborah Madison's ``Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone'' from the library.



This one looks like it might one to snipe off EBay or buy off bestbookbuys.com. I have a number of vegetarian cookbooks, having been raised somewhat vegetarian, but really only Yamuna Devi's Indian Vegetarian seems to have reached this level of depth and taste, and it's not an easy, daily cookbook. Madison has simple, to-the-point recipes that capture the core of a dish, like Elizabeth David, but David is shot through with those occasional, little, ineffable extra gems in her writing.

But even so, I just like reading Madison, maybe more than David. I feel like there's so much to learn, and many of the Cal-world-modern flavors and ideas are new to me, having been schooled by Hazan. This is definitely the first Jordanian dish I've ever made -- and I cooked it entirely wrong, not following Madison at all. But it still turned out tasty, which is a big credit to Madison in my opinion.

The problem was that I didn't have white Basmati rice, only brown Basmati, and I had to made dinner quickly and then leave for a late-evening appointment. And we know that brown rice cooks slowly.

So I put in the lentils, toor daal in Hindi or yellow pigeon pea gram lentils in English, and then the rice, as Madison said, and then I realized the brown Basmati would never finish on time. So I transferred to a pressure cooker. Which cooked the brown Basmati on time but made a slush out of the toor daal. And yet, it was good.

The beauty of Mujadarrah, what separates it from an Indian daal, is that there's no spices, no masala, only olive oil, black pepper and onion as the flavor. It is a simplified, highlighted daal, a simple khicherie.


Mujadarrah

Slice an onion into 1/4 inch rounds. Fry in medium-low in 6 tablespoons of olive oil (you know you can't got wrong now) until its mahogany colored. Meanwhile boil 1 1/4 cup of rinsed, sorted lentils (you can use green, brown, or yellow) in 1Q water and a little salt for about 15-20 min. Then add the rice, brown or white, and much black pepper (to taste). Cook covered until the rice is done, about 15 min for white and 1 hour for brown rice. When you're done, then mix in about half of the onions and use the rest to top the servings.

Simple, uses very few ingredients, and very tasty.

Apple Pie - A New Hope

This has been a long and winding road. I first made apple pie (crust from scratch of course) in fall of 2005, and it was incredible. Every time I made it, it came out amazing. The crust was crisp, light, nice, the apples were nice, everything was amazingly tasty. Then apple season ended, and I didn't make any pies or pie crusts until fall of 2006. And I had forgotten something.

The crusts from then on for a long time were tragic. Every time, every time, I would try to follow the instructions, first in Pepin's Technique, since that's where I think I first learned the original nice crusts, then in Julia Child. But instead of pie crust, I'd get nothing but disappointment every time. For years. The apples would be nicely roasted, soft, the crust would, every time, look like it might've worked. And then we'd taste it and it would be atrocious, in some slightly different way from before. Typically they would be hard, mealy, undercooked in some spots and overcooked in some spots.

I mentioned it to the nurse at the dental office once, and she told me that she had foolproof crust recipes, and gave me 4! And I tried a few, and they didn't work. I eventually just stopped making pies altogether, except on very rare occasions when I'd get my hopes up, and then every time they would be dashed by the first bite. But from the bottom, the only way to go is up.

I watched Julia Child's videos, and I saw that she made Tarte Tatin, and that it was pretty easy actually. I made Tarte Tatin, and it worked! The crust was not absurd! It wasn't great, but it was edible, not repellent, perhaps slightly enjoyable. That was the beginning. So I made Tarte Tatin a number of times and was somewhat pleased with it. But Tarte Tatin is not, to my memory, as good as those incredible apple pies in 2005. (Once I remember I processed heavy cream with ice in my food processor and made the butter which I used for the crust, and again, it was incredible, more so than other times. Today I wouldn't dare do that, the butter that you get is soft and moist, which seems like a totally unpredictable thing to put into the pie dough. But it worked once, very well, the butter flavor was even nicer.)

Then in Marcella Hazan I found a recipe for an Asti-style apple tart which was unlike any of the classic apple tarts, and so I made it, and it also came out decently. It is pleasant, aromatic, (it has a lemon and orange zest), very nice. But not like those apple pies.

A few weeks ago I made an apple pie from Pepin, I think, and the crust as not absurd. Again, it wasn't great, but not absurd. From what I recall, it had something to do with limiting the amount of water. But the result wasn't great enough for me to keep track of.

2 pies ago, there was an apple pie in the oven, from Pepin's Cooking with Claudine. No improvement. Then recently we started going to an orchard and got apples. Made a crust using the blender from Julia's Way to Cook. No improvement. She mentions low-gluten pastry flour, which I got, and made another crust with, again no improvement.

Today I made the crust from a website, then I finished it from Pepin's Techniques. Improvement. Definite improvement. What was different?

Water.

Water.

I added more water this time. Up to now, I somehow got it into my head that there shouldn't be a lot of water in the crust, the dough should break apart. This time I added water until I could roll it into a ball. When I rolled the dough out, it was still a little crumbly, hard to handle. So next time there will be more water. When I made the butter myself, the butter was watery! You can only squeeze out so much water from home-made butter.

The bottom of the pie is a bit soggy, so I think a little blind-baking might be in order.

Here's the website.

And just to make sure Dana's recipe stays here, here it is again:

INGREDIENTS

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup butter, chilled and diced
• 1/4 cup ice water

DIRECTIONS

1. In a large bowl, combine flour and salt. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in water, a tablespoon at a time, until mixture forms a ball. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight.
2. Roll dough out to fit a 9 inch pie plate. Place crust in pie plate. Press the dough evenly into the bottom and sides of the pie plate.

So the key to why this worked for me is that Dana says to make crumbs, then add water until it forms a ball, then wrap and refrigerate. Afterwards rolling it out!