Middle Eastern Meal

I LOVE middle eastern food. Its great to eat when its hot outside, delicious, and most of it you can eat with pita bread or with your hands. Both of which I like doing.

Mjaddarah (onions, rice and lentils)

1 cup rice
1 cup lentils
Oil
Onions

1.) put rice and lentils in a pot.
2.) Add 3-4 cups of water
3.) Cook the stuff til it boils
4.) Once it hits the boiling point, lower the heat and simmer for 15 min. or until done.
5.) While the lentils and rice cook, fry the onions til they are caramelized, then add to the rice and lentils.

Salad Shirazi

Cucumber
Onion
Tomato
Mint
Parsely
Lemon / Lemon juice
Olive oil

1.) Chop up and seed the cucumbers, tomatoes and onions
2.) Mix in the other ingredients
3.) Pile the stuff onto pita and eat

Pita Bread

1 package of yeast, or quick rising yeast
1/2 cup warm water
3 cups all purpose flour
1 1/4 teapsoon salt
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
1 cup lukewarm water

1.) Disolve yeast in water, add sugar and let sit until frothy
2.) Add other ingredients
3.) Knead/mix until you have a nice dough, and then coat the dough in oil, place in a bowl and let rise about 3 hours.
4.) Pinch off small balls of dough, make them into a pita shaped thing
5.) pre-heat oven to 500 degrees
6.) Place a pan on the bottom rack and place pitas on the pan
7.) Cook for 2 minutes, flip, cook 2 more minutes and then take the pita out
8.) continue until all the pita's are cooked.