MIDDLE EASTERN RICE AND LENTILS

I am loving the recipes from "Monkey and Me Kitchen Adventures." This rice and lentil dish is phenomenal. Don't be scared by the long list of spices. If you don't have fresh spices, go to a store that sells them in bulk and buy just the amount you need so it will be inexpensive. I shop at Good Foods Co-op and they sell hundreds of Frontier spices but not dried harissa seasoning. I had to buy Harissa paste from Trader Joe's which has a bit of oil but the benefit far exceeded the risk to use it in this dish.

I used a "Dutch oven" to make this dish. What is a Dutch oven?

Here is a 5 minute video by Dr. Greger discussing some of the benefits of lentils and chickpeas.

What I did differently:

-I used 1/2 of a large yellow sweet onion

-Chopped the onion and pepper together in a food processor

-Used 4 large cloves of garlic

-Used all broth, not water

-For the dry seasoning mix my choices for the follow were 2 tsp cumin, 1/4th tsp ground coriander, 1/4 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp Himalayan salt, 1/8th tsp cayenne

-Instead of dried harissa seasoning, added to the pot 1 1/2 tsp Harissa paste

-My can of lentils were salt free

-For the tomato cucumber topping I used 1/3-1/2 of a large English cucumber and since I did not want to buy fresh parsley I used 1 tsp dried parsley

-For the sauce I used Kite Hill plain almond milk yogurt.