Cafe Liz

Majadera

I learned how to make majadera from Naifeh, one of my roommates when I lived in Haifa. Majadera is a relatively simple dish — it has very few ingredients, which happen to combine to make a whole protein.

Majadera is prepared in stages — first you fry the onions until they’re nearly burnt. This is what gives the dish its flavor. Then you cook the lentils until they’re soft. Finally, you add the rice, which absorbs the rest of the water (if you’ve measured your water properly). This is why the premade majadera mixes sold at our health food store give me pause — you really can’t mix all the ingredients together in advance. I react the same way to restaurant majadera where the rice is white. If it looks like they cooked the rice, lentils and onions separately, and mixed all three together after the fact, it may come out looking tidier but it just won’t have that much flavor. Continue reading Majadera …

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