Tag Archives: rice

I’ll See Your Rice and Raise You a Lentil: Shannon’s Easy Mujaddara

Posted on by
mujaddara

Did you know that dishes that combine a grain and a legume (like peanut butter sandwiches or, um, mujaddara) offer your body a complete set of proteins?

Whenever we go to Jason’s parents’ house for a holiday, I can rest assured that lurking somewhere in the refrigerator will be a container of mujaddara for us to “snack on.” The quotation marks are necessary, because the container is approximately the size of a bathtub. I chalk up the mammoth proportions to two factors: 1) Bob, Jason’s dad, is immensely fond of the Bosnian guy who owns a restaurant near his company’s offices, and 2) we are a clan that can polish off a vast quantity of the rice and lentil dish with alarming speed.

As delicious as the Richmond holiday version is, it’s not always within easy reach when a mujaddara craving hits, so I recently went hunting for a recipe. There are approximately a zillion floating around the internet (and yes, I’m about to add one more). Because I loathe soggy rice and was concerned about my own ability to time things correctly, I combined a couple versions that called for the rice and lentils to be prepared separately. Even though that probably makes it less traditional, the final product turned out quite well—aromatic and subtle and earthy, a warmly comforting end to a chilly fall day.

Shannon’s Easy Mujaddara

  • 1 cup lentils (any variety will work, but the baby ones are nice)
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 2 cups water, vegetable stock, white wine, or a combination of these
  • 2 cinnamon sticks
  • 1 tablespoon cumin
  • ½ teaspoon allspice
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • 1 cup rice
  • 3 small or 2 medium onions, sliced Continue reading →

Carrot Cake Breakfast Porridge

Posted on by

carrot cake for breakfastThere are some food textures that I cannot abide. Enormous hunks of sun-dried tomato make me gag; the mealy, fibrous feel of some kinds of squash turns my stomach. The soggy consistency of overcooked, waterlogged rice might top both of these, however, on my personally calibrated grossness scale. Last week, when Jason got distracted with multiple other components of an ambitious dinner and let the brown rice go too long, I just couldn’t eat it. But since both of us hate wasting food, the conundrum became what to do with a giant pot of leftover rice.

Thus began my scheming for a grand resurrection of the watery grains. In the past, I’ve enjoyed both a Moosewood recipe for stovetop rice pudding and a slow cooker recipe for oatmeal that tastes like pumpkin pie, so I thought I might be able to combine them into a yummy weekend breakfast. Also, we had an abundance of carrots in the fridge after Jason found a mother lode of root vegetables at the farmers market, and when I recalled that I do now have a modicum of carrot cake experience, a plan began to take shape.

Below is the recipe that I came up with. When the rice was cooked with almond milk until it had the consistency of oatmeal, I no longer found it repulsive. And despite having the word “cake” in the name, most of the ingredients are terrifically healthy. You deserve a merit badge, however, if you manage to leave off the cream cheese (cheese of wonder!) and honey glaze that I added at the end for a boost of carrot cake flavor and a touch of decadence. Continue reading →

Community New Update: The House and Arsenic Rice

Posted on by

This photo came up when I googled "super rice."

On October 8th, I wrote about the Consumer Reports investigation that revealed dangerous levels of arsenic in pretty much all the rice we eat.  In that post, I also mentioned that there are currently no federal laws governing how much arsenic is permissible in food.  The FDA regulates arsenic in bottled water, but that’s it.

Turns out three House Democrats (Conn. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, N.J. Rep. Frank Pallone, and N.Y. Rep. Nita Lowey) have introduced a bill—The R.I.C.E. Act—that would require the FDA set a legal limit for arsenic levels in rice.  Continue reading →

Community News: Uncle Ben and Old Lace

Posted on by

Turns out most rice we eat has dangerous levels of arsenic.  This is particularly true in baby and infant food.   Arsenic is a Category One carcinogen specializing in lung, skin, and bladder cancer.  Oh, happy day.  The gist: eat less rice, no more than half-a-cup per day.

A while back Consumer Reports ran a study that turned up serious levels of arsenic in many brands of apple and grape juices.  This prompted them to do another round of tests on rice, particularly susceptible to arsenic because it’s a water plant.  What CR found was that pretty much each of the 65 rice products they tested with 223 samples—brown or white, organic or synthetically-altered, adult cereal or infant cereal—were tainted far above EPA standards.

The EPA does not regular arsenic in food.  It does so in water, though, choosing 10 parts per billion of inorganic arsenic as the threshold of acceptability.  This level was negotiated by the USA Rice Federation and chemical companies up from the 5 ppb threshold favored by scientists, and negotiation of thresholds for naturally-occurring arsenic are still being negotiated.  The cost to the rice and chemical industries of working that negotiation are far less than the cost of making their products safer, you can be sure.  Rice is a $34 billion-a-year enterprise.

Once CR released its study, the FDA, who has been studying arsenic in rice for decades, released its findings thus far.  The results are more-or-less the same. Continue reading →