TROUT & LENTILS?!

I don’t write nearly enough here about my phenomenal culinary failures. In retrospect, tonight’s menu seems obviously Doomed: sautÈed trout with lentils and rice with caramelized onions. This was sort of a conflagration of things I’ve been meaning to try, i.e. non-salmon fish and some kind of forbs/pulses. The trout actually turned out ok, if a bit heavy on the butter, but the rice and lentils turned into goo. Thick, beany goo. The kind of goo that could harden into rock, that could mend a chimney, that could probably survive atmospheric re-entry, and that could probably have served 37. You can’t really eat more than a half cup of it at a sitting. Part of me wants to blame the cumin, which was allowed to go solo in this dish despite my general aversion to it, and that part is my aching stomach and future gut. But I can also blame my choice of red lentils, which were done way, way before they ever met the rice. If I were an attractive royal with a sword, I’d be tragic hero numero uno.