In our view this is THE quintessential rice dish of the Middle East. It is fantastic comfort food: sweet and earthy, with a great tangled topping of caramelised onions. Although we gave a recipe for it in our very first book, Arabesque, we just couldn’t leave it out from a vegetarian cookbook. Just about every country around the region has a version of this dish because they understand the value of boosting the protein value of rice with lentils. And so the Persians have their addas polow, and everywhere there are versions of mjaddarah (Lebanon and Syria), moudjendar (Cyprus) or megadarra (Egypt). Serve it with a sharp, bitter leaf salad.