Egyptian lentils (Kusherie)

Here is yet another recipe from $5 dinner mom's book.  I really liked this one. I never knew it, but cumin and brown sugar together are absolutely delicious.   I've been eating the left overs for days.  Yummy.  I do have some suggestions though for next time.  -Definitely just stir everything together.  The lentils and rice had nothing on them, but the tomato sauce was very flavorful and good.  The original had you just stir a bit into the noodles, serve them to the side, then put the rice and lentils next to the noodles with the red sauce on top, and onions over that.  I ate a bite or 2 like this, then mixed it together on my plate.   I mixed the rest together to store the left overs.  In the future I'll mix everything because it was hard to divide the right amount of sauce over the right amount of lentils.  I also might add a bit of water to the sauce because as left overs the rice and lentils were a bit crunchy.  I did cut some oil out of this recipe, and used some butter for the onions. 

The only bad thing about this recipe - it does take like every pot in the house.  This is how I made it.

$5 dinner mom p. 244

Ingredients

• 1 cup elbow macaroni (DH said he would have liked more, but I thought it was fine.)
• 1 cup brown rice
• 1 cup lentils
• 1 green pepper, diced (I used 1/4 cup dehydrated green and red - which I rehydrated)
• 1 Tablespoon canola oil
• 1 15 oz. can tomato sauce
• 1 6 oz. can tomato paste
• 1 Tablespoon brown sugar
• 2 Tablespoons ground cumin
• salt and pepper
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 sweet onion, cut into strips
• 1 Tablespoon butter

Directions

1. Start brown rice in rice cooker (or on stovetop.)
2. Cook macaroni according to package directions, drain and set aside.
3. In yet another pan, cook the lentils in 4 cups of water on medium-high heat for 20 minutes.  If water gets too low, add more.  If lentils are soft, and there is extra water, drain it off. 
4. In a small skillet saute the diced bell pepper in the oil.  Add the tomato sauce, brown sugar, cumin, salt, pepper and garlic powder.  Let simmer about 10 minutes.
5. In another skillet (or the same one if you're cooking brown rice on the stove.)  Saute onions in the butter until browned and caramelized.
6. Next time I will just mix everything together at the end.  As mentioned above, the original had you mix a few spoons of sauce into the macaroni.  Put that in a serving dish.  Mix the brown rice and lentils together and put that next to the macaroni.  Then top it with the remaining tomato sauce and onions.  The only advantage to that was I didn't serve onions to everyone, but that is it.  Definitely easier to mix it all together.