making your own hummus

You'd never believe it, after sitting around looking over my left-hand-side new-things-to-do list for how long now? I'm finally plowing through it. 

Today: awesome hummus!!

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I've made hummus before, probably most of you have, it's pretty straightforward. I was once responsible for making the condiments at a café in Glebe about fifteen years ago when I worked there as a cook through uni. A couple of very skilled and fabulous chefs (who taught me just about everything I know) showed me how to make hummus, pesto and harissa. 

Except I haven't made any of those three condiments for years now. And GOSH I love hummus and pesto in particular.

So I put in on my list to get back into it. 

I've also been buying the drop-dead AMAZING hummus from Erciyes in Surry Hills and thought it might be fun to try and make one nearly as good. Honestly not sure I can quite claim that but this one is pretty damn yummy as far as hummus goes. 

If you haven't made it before you have to try it! If you don't have a food processor it's a bit trickier – you could use a blender and do it in a much smaller batch. Or you could crush the chickpeas in a mortar and pestle but really I'm not sure I'd bother. Unless you have quite a lot of anxiety to work out then I'd recommend using the mortar and pestle for everything. Awesome therapy.

Hummus recipe inspired by Virginia Seymour/John Svinos' recipe from Rose Blues Café circa 1992.

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INGREDIENTS

2 x 400g tinned chickpeas. (Use dried or fresh if you like – I'm just interested in speed.)

5 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

150ml olive oil

2.5 tblsp tahini

2 tsp ground cumin

juice of 2 lemons (yields about 90 mls)

125 mls water

METHOD

Put all ingredients except water into the food processor and whizz till smooth. Slowly add the water, testing consistency until you have the right smoothness you like. (I use about 125ml water because I love hummus smooth and creamy – use less if you like it chunkier and thicker.)

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We had it spread on homemade lavash crackers (i.e. old wholemeal lavash bread cut and dried into crackerbread in the oven) with our favourite pumpkin soup (with a sneaky cup of quinoa added for nutrition tonight, they never noticed.)

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Two other lovely things:

My completely excellent friend Lucie, who conveniently belongs to Tilly's best friend Emily, took Tilds for a couple of hours today while Henry was at school, and I escaped up to King Street Newtown, such an awesome walk. Managed to come back with a new pair of shoes, hurray!

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Also: have just put a few 'emergency chocolate peanut butter cups' in the fridge to set. Remember these?

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For no particular celebratory reason except it's Friday night and why not?

Hope you all have a totally lovely weekend. (And GO Mark Webber in the F1 in Melbourne!!)

xxx

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