and things went downhill from there

Tonight on "Cooking With plonq":

Nothing like some mujadara to warm you on a cold winter's night - or - "we are scraping the bottom of the bin for ingredients; what can we make from this stuff?"

Ideally, this is made from brown lentils rather than green, but it doesn't make a lot of difference once they go into the Instant Pot. I measured out a cup of lentils and covered them with boiling water to soak while I worked on other things. I also rinsed a cup of brown basmati rice and let it soak (in cold water).

The recipe called for shallots, but I substituted a couple of small, yellow onions. I zipped them into thin slices on the mandolin and put them in the pressure cooker to start caramelizing in olive oil while I minced up some garlic cloves and some fresh ginger. The recipe called for powdered ginger, but I substituted fresh ginger and adjusted the quantity up to compensate. The ginger in the fridge needed to be used.

While I waited for the onions, I measured out some cumin, coriander, allspice, cinnamon. and kosher salt into a small bowl. Once the onions looked done, I scooped out about half of them to serve as a garnish and then dumped in the garlic and ginger. I stirred that for a couple of minutes until it was fragrant, then tossed in the spices and mixed it all together, roasting them for a few seconds until they just started to smoke.

At that point, I quickly dumped in three cups of hot water. I mixed that up, scraping up the fond from the bottom of the pot, then drained and added the rice and lentils. The recipe called for lemon zest here, but we don't have any lemons. I pondered on alternatives, and just as I was reaching for the lemon pepper, I suddenly remembered that we have dried kaffir lime leaves. I added two of those and a bay leaf, hoping that they would be adequate substitutes.

I set it to cook on high pressure for 11 minutes and gave it another 10 minutes of natural release time before I opened the vent. Finally, while I was waiting for it to cook, I harvested a bit of fresh parsley from the basement and minced it fine.

The verdict: It was good. Just the thing for a cold winter night. The kaffir lime and bay leaves seemed to fit the bill nicely.