Khichri (Parsi rice and lentils)

This was inspired by the two recipes for khichri in My Bombay Kitchen: Traditional and Modern Parsi Home Cooking by Niloufer Ichaporia King. The little stories in cookbook are wonderfully interesting, and the recipes are different from things that I'm familiar with (they are a combination of Indian and Persian). I first noticed it because it won a James Beard award, so borrowed a copy from the library, but I think I'm going to buy one so I can have it in my permanent collection! NPR has an article about the cookbook and some of the recipes posted.

King always cooks her rice on the stove top; I always use a rice cooker. In addition, she suggests adding some softened onions to the khichri, but I didn't have some on hand. I also used a mixture of half rice, and half lentils and mung beans. The lentils cook in the same amount of time as the rice, so they turned out very soft, but the mung beans were a bit crunchier then I'd like--next time I use mung beans, I would soak the rice/bean mixture for 30 minutes before cooking to help soften the beans (I think I was actually supposed to use split & husked mung beans, not the whole beans). In addition, I've also reduced the size of the recipe to make only 1 cup.

My Khichri: (makes 1 cup cooked rice)
1 part basmati rice
1 part red lentils (masur dal) or husked mung beans (mung dal) or a mixture of both
1 tbsp oil or ghee (I used olive oil -- which isn't parsi at all, but I don't have any ghee)
1/2 stick cinnamon
2 or 3 whole cloves (I didn't have any so I used a very small pinch of clove powder)
6 black peppercorns, ground (or a few twists of grated pepper)
2 cardamom pods
2 red chiles, cut in half
1/4 tsp turmeric
a pinch of salt

Wash the rice, lentils and, beans in several changes of water until the water is almost clear. Check and make sure that the mixture doesn't have any stones. Add the appropriate amount of water (my rice cooker has water lines according to how much rice is being cooked). Add the remaining ingredients. You can either cook the mixture right away, or if you would like an even softer khichri, let the mixture soak for up to 30 minutes. Cook the mixture in a rice cooker, following the machine's normal directions. When the rice is done, fluff it gently.