Pumpkin Wedge Mujadara
Alice Zaslavsky · The Joy of Better Cooking
My babushka Raya and I didn’t always see eye to eye. She’d say, ‘Your room should be like a candy’, when it more resembled a wasteland of discarded wrappers, but one thing we both loved was thrifting. In my teens, I’d walk with her to the op-shops down the road, where they’d know her by name, but in my twenties, I’d treat her to a drive down the highway to the biggest op-shop within a 100 km radius: Savers Frankston. Two storeys of second-hand shmatters that we would both enthusiastically trawl for mohair cardigans and plaid skirts. We’d cap off the trip by visiting the teeny Turkish cafe next door, for the jewel in the weekly crown: a tub of mujadara. Sweet with caramelised onion, with chewy lentils and fluffy rice, this was another thing we could both agree on. She’s no longer with us, but those cardigans and skirts still hang in her room, which remains tidy like a candy. My housekeeping skills never improved, by the way…but I make a mean mujadara.
