Mujadara

My recipe submission for this month is mujadara. We served it with pita chips, hummus and labne. The recipe that I used is here.

Mujadara
recipe courtesy of Confused Homemaker over at Tasty Kitchen

• 1 cup Lentils
• 4 whole Onions
• 3-½ cups Water
• 1 cup White Rice
• 1 teaspoon Cumin
• 1 teaspoon Salt
• ½ teaspoons Pepper
• 2 Tablespoons Vegetable Oil 

Directions

Slice the onions. The onions should be sliced long, so they look like a rain­bow ver­sus diced into small pieces.
Heat a pot on medium-high heat. Add 1 table­spoon of veg­etable oil and half an onion. Cook until onion is caramelized.
Add lentils, water, salt and pep­per. Bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat and sim­mer for 20 minutes.
After 20 min­utes, add rice and cumin. Cover and sim­mer for addi­tional 20 minutes.
Heat a fry­ing pan over medium-high heat. Add the remain­ing 1 table­spoon of veg­etable oil and the remain­ing onions. Cook until fully caramelized and blackened.
Note: we used green lentils and yel­low onions for this dish.

My recipe for hummus is as follows:
1 can chick peas
2 garlic cloves
2 T of the liquid from the can of chick peas
2 T tahini
salt and pepper to taste
juice of a lemon
Whir it all up in a food processor or blender. Taste it to see if it needs more lemon juice or salt.When I serve it, I drizzle it with a bit of olive oil and sprinkle it with some paprika.

Labne is a Middle Eastern kefir cheese with several different spellings, depending on which country it's from. The stuff I had was Lebanese. My neighbor gave it to us and I don't know where she got it from, so I hope you can find it. But it's still VERY good without the labne.

For the pita chips, I buy thin pita, cut it up into pie shapes, spray it with olive oil spray and then sprinkle it with garlic salt. Bake at 450 for about 5 minutes or until crisp.

They way we ate it was to spread the pita chip with a bit of the labne, put some mujadara on it, the top it with hummus. I liked it just from the bowl. It's very good though!!