Spiced Lentils with collards over rice

This is a budget friendly meal that is healthy and has a good dose of flavor.  This is a homely little dish but what it lacks in visual pleasure it will make up for on your taste buds and in your body.  This is roughly what I did (I don't really follow recipes so writing what I do out on the blog feels a little weird for me most of the time.  It's good for me so I can go back and see what I did.  What follows is much more accurate to my method than typing out actual measurements).

Spice Lentils with Collard Greens over Rice

Soak lentils over night

Pressure cook in chicken broth til tender (about 7-8 min for me)

Boil a large bunch of collard greens in salted water for 7 minutes.  Drain into a colander and rinse with cold water to stop the cooking (basically you're blanching them).  You could use spinach instead of collards and skip this step and just at the spinach near the end of cooking (I liked the stronger taste of the collards though).

Caramelize 2 onions.  Add the following spices to taste: Cumin, Coriander, Fennel seed (so Jeremy can try to imagine there is some sausage in there somewhere), Arabic 7 Spice (recipe below), cardamom, salt and pepper.  Let it get frangrant.  Add 4 cloves garlic.  

Add the drained lentils (I used half of the 1 lb bag after it was cooked- saving the other half for something else).  Add the collards.  Splash of white wine.  A little chicken bouillon (I dissolved mine in about 1/4 cup warm water).  A squirt of Sriracha. Simmer.  Adjust to taste.

We served it over seasoned rice (you could do brown rice or quinoa or a nice flatbread).  It was very thick, not soupy.  And it was pretty tasty!

I used this recipe as my jumping off point: http://food52.com/recipes/8552-spiced-lentil-sambusas

  I would love to fill some wonton wrappers with the filling and bake it up for some snacks (I'm always so hungry around 4pm)- of course then it's no longer gluten-free but I'm pretty sure Jeremy will forgive me for eating most of the lentils as he is not over the moon about them in general).

Arabic 7 Spice:

I mixed up a bunch of Arabic 7 Spice a while ago and like to throw it things that I want to give a middle Eastern flair to.  (you could mix up a bunch too or just adjust the recipe above to reflect these flavors). The recipe is:

1/2 tsp Cumin

 "       Black pepper

 "       Cardamon

1 tsp.   Nutmeg

2 tsp.   Cinnamon

1/2 tsp. cloves

3/4 tsp.  allspice