christopher-hill.com

Hummus

For some reason, I'd always struggled making hummus. I'd try this recipe and that recipe, but it would never taste right. It would simply taste like smashed up chick peas. It occurred to me this weekend that what I was doing wrong was following a recipe. Better, it turns out, to follow your gut and add ingredient/taste/add ingredient/taste until it's right and it's what you want. Hummus then becomes dead easy to make and is a dead cheap treat.

Here's what you do:
Soak your chickpeas over night. Easy this bit - put them in a container cover in plenty of water, and forget about them until the next day. When judging how many you need, remember that they will triple in size once they soaked/cooked.
Drain.
Boil for 2.5 hours.
Strain, reserving the cooking liquid.
Put in food processor with a little of the cooking liquid, a teaspoon of tahini, a clove or garlic, a load of olive oil and a tablespoon of lemon juice.
Blend them up good and proper.
Season with salt, pepper and if desired (I desire) paprika or cayenne pepper.
Then just keep tasting/seasoning until you've got it right, adding more oil or lemon juice or cooking liquid if desired.

When serving, I like to drizzle extra olive oil on top, and sprinkle on paprika.

Easy. Although there is a 12 hour time gap between starting and finishing what with the soaking and cooking time, the time spent actually doing something is only about 10 minutes.

If you haven't remembered or haven't time to soak/cook your chick peas, you could buy a can of ready to use chickpeas, but I don't see the point of that, as a can of chickpeas isn't much cheaper than buying a pot of ready made hummus, so you may as well just do that.

Monday, January 07, 2008 8:30 PM