Recipe: Rashta (Laiyan's Version)

Ingredients:

1. half box of pasta (you can use any shape but I usually use the "Bowtie" shapes)
2. 200 grams or around 1  1/2 cups of lentils
3. 2-3 medium to large onions (it may seem a lot but once you fry them they shrink) you can fry more if you like more onions.
4. 1-2 cloves of garlic, minced
5. freshly squeezed lemon juice (2-3 lemons)
6. salt
7. vegetable oil for frying
8. garnish: chopped cilantro (if you're feeling fancy!)

Directions: 

1. Wash the lentils and boil them adding salt till they become soft. Keep the water. 
2. While lentils are cooking, slice onions into halves, then slice each half vertically. 
3. Fry onions in vegetable oil (don't let the onions get covered completely with oil), when done, remove onto plate with paper towel to soak excess oil.
4. Boil pasta according to package instructions and drain. 
5. Once the lentils are done, add drained pasta with lentil (with its water) and bring to a soft boil. 
6. Add chopped garlic, some of the fried onions, salt and some of the lemon juice and mix well so everything is incorporated. 
7. Let it boil to reduce some of the liquid (the fried onions will transfer some of its color and make the dish brownish and a bit of the starch from the boiled pasta will make the entire dish hold together).
8. Once some of the liquid reduces remove from heat. 
9. Serve and sprinkle remaining fried onions on top. Add additional lemon juice and salt if you need. Add chopped cilantro if you are feeling fancy but its totally ok to skip this and serve!