I tried using a pre-made curry sauce and spices instead of the salsa. It was... okay. Edible.
Cooked the dried beans for 5 minutes in Instapot on high pressure, then drained, rinsed, then added to recipe. I also reduced the cook time to 23 minutes. This made the beans less crunchy and the rice less... homogenous, so an improvement in texture. I also added a bit of Italian seasoning, but I don't think that affected the overall flavor, given how much of the other seasonings I also added.
I used Morton and Bassett spice blends, which are salt-free, but you could probably use any blend. The original recipe had no spices included. Relatedly, "tablespoon of spice" is a misnomer, I just kept on adding spice until the vibes felt right lol. I also used a Floating Leaf wild rice blend from Costco instead of plain brown rice and that worked fine. Beans still had a bit of crunch to them, which wasn't great. The beans were probably old and could have benefited from some parcooking.