So, Western Sahara. It’s on our tattered list of countries, so we must have seen it on a list of countries at some point. Having just looked at an online list, it’s not there. Nor is it in our Lonely Planet book of countries. Wikipedia tells us it’s a ‘disputed territory’ and a ‘non-self-governing territory.’ We probably could have got away with taking it off the list, but decided to go for it anyway… just in case.
Of course, non-countries don’t really have national dishes. Most of what we found was really Moroccan. We were going to make a Berber recipe for ‘desert couscous’ (not dessert couscous which we initially misread it as and which sounded interesting) but the recipe seemed too complicated and the website kept crashing. The best we could eventually find was ‘Rice in the Sahara’, based on a dish that had been eaten by the author in the Sahara. This seemed about as authentic as it was going to get!
Rice in the Sahara
Ingredients
3 cups vegetable stock
1 cup brown rice (although we used white rice in the hope the kids would eat it)
2 tbsp cooking oil
1 onion, sliced
Pinch of saffron
1/2 cup red lentils
1 cinnamon stick
1 tsp ground allspice
3 Medjool dates, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup flaked almonds, toasted
Method
1. In a medium saucepan, bring 2 cups of the stock to the boil over high heat.
2. Add the rice, cover, and reduce the heat to low. Simmer just until the rice absorbs the liquid and leans towards tenderness, about 30 minutes. Remove from the heat and let cool.
3. In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat.
4. Add the onion and stir until evenly coated, then cover, reduce the heat to low and cook for about 20 minutes. (The onion will still be pale and will have released quite a lot of liquid.)
5. Add the saffron and raise the heat to medium.
6. Add the red lentils and stir to combine.
7. Add the remaining cup of stock, cover again and continue cooking for 10-15 minutes, until the lentils are tender but not mushy.
8. Add the cinnamon stick and then stir in the allspice, cooked rice and dates, and season.
9. Heat over medium heat, stirring to combine, until heated through.
10. Just before serving, stir in the toasted almonds.
Serves 2-3
Not wanting to make the same mistake we did with Cape Verdean rice, we doubled the above recipe to make sure there was enough of it, and there certainly was – nearly too much to fit in the pan, which made reheating the rice quite a challenge. An additional challenge was getting our children to eat it, as neither of them seemed very keen, although Preschooler Mash did have some.
Was it worth the effort of making it, though, for a non-country? Maybe… it was hearty and filling, and it helped us declutter a bag of red lentils that had been sitting in the cupboard for ages. It wasn’t terribly exciting, though. It desperately needed the almonds to give it a bit of interest (we wished we’d made the full quantity in the recipe instead of ignoring that and just doing a handful), and Miranda isn’t a big fan of saffron so wasn’t going to be won over by that. We can definitely see how it’s a desert food, delivering a lot of nutrition with little more than pantry staples, but we bet those desert nomads get really excited when they wander somewhere with a bit more fresh produce.
Good Food on Bad Plates 