Koshari

Before you start

• soak the chickpeas 8 hours ahead, or use a drained tin
• four pans on at once, and the onions want half an hour of attention

Ingredients

Serves 4 · dimmer marks are storecupboard

• 250glong-grain rice
• 150gbrown lentils — brown or green — red ones collapse and ruin the texture
• 120gsmall pasta — ditalini, elbows or broken vermicelli
• 50gdried chickpeas — or half a drained tin
• 3onions
• 1 tintinned tomatoes
• 2½ tbspoil
• 2 tbspvinegar
• 2 tspcumin and chilli flakes
• 4garlic cloves

Method

9 steps

1. soak · 8 hours walk away

   Chickpeas under cold water overnight, unless they are coming out of a tin.

2. boil · 45m walk away

   Drained chickpeas in fresh water until tender all the way through but still holding together.

3. chop · 8m

   Onions halved and sliced thin and even — thick slices burn at the edge before the middle has gone gold.

4. fry · 30m

   Onions into the oil over medium heat, stirred now and then, until they are deep brown and crisp at the edges. This is the whole dish. Pushed on high heat they scorch, and burnt onion cannot be taken back out of the plate.

5. boil · 22m walk away

   Lentils in unsalted water until cooked but still whole. Salted early they stay stubborn; overcooked they turn the whole bowl to paste.

6. simmer · 15m

   Tomatoes with the garlic, cumin and chilli in a spoonful of the onion oil, cooked down until it darkens and thickens enough to sit on a spoon.

7. boil · 14m walk away

   Rice on with a little of the onion oil, lid, lowest heat; pasta cooked separately in salted water and drained.

8. fold · 3m

   The daqqa: vinegar, a crushed clove of garlic and a pinch of cumin stirred together in a cup. Without it the plate is flat, and no amount of chilli fixes that.

9. finish · 4m

   Layered rather than mixed — rice, lentils, pasta, then sauce, chickpeas, daqqa, and the onions last so they are still crisp when they reach the table.