Failure! I have created a total cooking failure for the first time in ages. Worse, I'm not sure exactly where I went wrong. Some combination of what I cooked last night for dinner turned it into a ball of rubber. Please, genius cookerdwarfs, tell me what I must change for next time.
It was very simple. I'm recovering from food poisoning so I looked for the gentlest stuff I could find without forcing myself to ever eat another banana again for the rest of my life. I sauteed some onion, carrot, and fresh ginger in a very small amount of olive oil. Then I added a cup of red lentils and 1.5 cups of water and let it simmer for about 15 minutes. Then I added a cup of jasmine rice, another 1.5 cups of water, and about a half a teaspoon of turmeric. It quickly turned into a sticky mess. The water floated on top and the rest was just a sticky goop with hard pieces of rice in it. What the hell happened? Is it the turmeric? The combination of red lentils and rice? I know it's fine to do this with green lentils, but red are gentler on my stomach. I managed to get the rice mostly cooked by constantly stirring it and adding a little more water, but holy cow was that not at all what I had intended.
The final product tasted okay, but as it dried, it quickly turned to something like rubber and became increasingly difficult to eat. Worse, when I tried to scrape the last out of the pan, I discovered a layer of it had stuck to the bottom and burned. So, uh... Yeah. That was fun to clean, as well.
Help!