Food Matters Project #6: Hummus

It’s another recipe idea from The Food Matters Project!  I’m slightly delayed, but I’m blaming it all on the chickpeas.  This weeks recipe was chosen by Erin of Naturally Ella.  She has a beautiful blog, with wonderful pictures that everyone should check out!  Erin had chosen the Hummus Served Hot recipe from Mark Bittman’s book- Food Matters Cookbook.  Check out the comments section to see what others had made.

The original recipe was hummus served hot, which Mark Bittman discovered while visiting Turkey.  He also suggested a variety of different flavors for the hummus, not just the plain one.

Although hot hummus in a sandwich sounds wonderful, we’ve been trying to make our own hummus for a while now, with a number of failed attempts.  Most of the time we can’t get the texture right, although that hasn’t been our only issue.  Of course when making this, we have another failed attempt- but the kitchen disasters are what makes cooking fun!

We’ve been trying to use less canned goods, and trying out more dried lentils and beans.  So I picked up a couple of bags of dried chickpeas from the grocery store.  Per package instructions, I intended to soak them overnight.  But we had somewhat of a busy weekend, and about 48 hours later, when we checked out the chickpeas they had a weird smell to them.  Yes, they began fermenting in their water, yes the 2 pounds of dried chickpeas.  Which is why I’m blaming this delayed post on the chickpeas- I had to grab another bag from the store yesterday.

Round 2: Rinse of the chickpeas.  Soak the chickpeas in water and 1 tsp of baking soda (mix it up) for about 3.5 hours (or longer).  Rinse off the chickpeas.  Add them into a large pot, fill with water well above the chickpeas.  Heat until the water boils, and then lower the heat to medium-low.  Boil the chickpeas for about 2 hours, or until they are soft and mushy when you try them.

Yes, we won over the chickpeas!!!  My excitement doubled when I made pitas from scratch yesterday- and they worked on the first try.  But that recipe will have to wait for tomorrow.

Garlic Hummus
Adapted from: The Food Matters Cookbook (page 356)

1 lb chickpeas (canned or cooked)
1 head of garlic, roughly chopped
juice of 1 lemon
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup water

Add the chickpeas, garlic and lemon juice into a food processor.  Purèe until the texture is smooth.  Then slowly add the olive oil and water, do this a little at a time- you don’t want to hummus to get too soggy.  Continue to purèe until the consistency is to your liking (this means you can use less/more water or olive oil).

*Note: I am allergic to tahini, but it is usually added to hummus.  You’d add it in with the chickpeas and garlic, about 1/4 cup.