Cypriot Lentils and Rice with Onions (Moutzentra)

Moutzentra is the dish every Cypriot household knows how to make without a recipe, and it comes out most often through Lent, when it feeds a table for almost nothing and breaks no fasting rule. Lentils, rice, onions, olive oil, lemon. That is the whole list.

The onions are not a garnish and they are not seasoning. Something close to half a kilo of them goes into a pan with olive oil and is cooked for twenty-five slow minutes until genuinely dark, sweet and jammy, and that is where all the flavour in the dish comes from.

It belongs to a family that runs right across the eastern Mediterranean, from mujaddara in Lebanon eastwards, and the Cypriot version has its own habits: brown lentils rather than green, a heavier hand with the lemon, and fresh coriander stirred in at the end in many households.

Key preparation steps

1. Simmer brown lentils until nearly tender.
2. Fry a large quantity of onions until dark and sweet.
3. Add rice to the lentils and cook them together.
4. Fold half the onions through and pile the rest on top.

Which lentils should I use?

Brown lentils, which are what Cypriot cooks reach for and what holds its shape through a further fifteen minutes with the rice. Green lentils work equally well and are slightly firmer.

Red split lentils are the one kind that will not do. They break down completely into a puree within ten minutes, and moutzentra is meant to be a dish of separate grains and whole lentils rather than a mush.

How dark should the onions go?

Much darker than you would normally take an onion. Deep mahogany brown, with some pieces close to black at the edges, after twenty to twenty-five minutes over medium heat in a good amount of olive oil.

That colour is sugar caramelising and it is the entire flavour of the dish. Onions taken only to golden give a moutzentra that tastes flat and beany. Keep them moving in the last five minutes, since the line between dark and burnt is short.

How much water do the lentils and rice need?

Cook the lentils in plenty of water first, uncovered, then drain them and measure fresh liquid for the rice stage: roughly one and a half times the volume of the rice, plus a little for the lentils to keep absorbing.

Do it that way and both cook properly. Throwing rice into the lentil pot with whatever water happens to be left is how you end up with either soup or a scorched bottom.

What is served with moutzentra?

Plain yogurt or talattouri on the side is the standard Cypriot accompaniment, along with a tomato and cucumber salad and olives. Some households add a bowl of pickles, which cuts the sweetness of the onions well.

Through Lent the yogurt goes and the plate stays vegan: moutzentra, salad, olives, bread and lemon. That is a complete meal by any measure and it is how the dish is most often eaten in Cyprus.

What matters in this dish