Ted and I just returned from a great trip to Newport, Rhode Island. An easy side dish to tonight’s dinner was a must. The following recipe was perfect.
We are in for a treat this week with A Taste of Utica cookbook recipes. We have two different versions of Humus offered on pages 14 and 15 of our book Humus, offered by Kathleen Hobiaca is very simple. Using a food processor or blender add the following:
- 2 cloves minced garlic
- 2 TBS oil
- 1 can chick peas – drain but reserve the juice.
- 1 heaping TBS of Tahini *Tahini is ground hulled sesame seeds made into a paste and available at your local grocery store.
- juice of 1 or 2 lemons
Process until smooth. If it seems too thick for your liking, add the liquid from the drained chick peas to thin. Kathleen suggests you serve this traditional dip with pita bread. You can see, I have opted for carrots and thin bread sticks.
The next recipe, on page 15, is Hummus and offered by our very own….(drum roll please….) Joe Mezz. Joe makes this dip for a crowd.
- 5 cups chick peas (garbanzo beans)…this equates to about 3 15oz cans – drained, or 2 cups dried which you have soaked then cooked.
- 1/4 cup Tahini
- 2 TBS cold water
- 2 TBS fresh lemon juice
- 1/2 tsp ground cumin
- 1/2 tsp garlic, chopped
- 1 TBS extra virgin olive oil
Drain and rinse the chick peas if using canned. Combine the chick peas with every ingredient EXCEPT the olive oil in the food processor. Blend to a rough puree, adding more water if necessary. The mixture should not be totally smooth. Scrape the mixture into a bowl THEN stir in the olive oil.
Humus or Hummus is a very popular dip around Utica. You will see it at almost every house party, tail gate party, picnic…it’s just a wonderful side. I’ve had it with lettuce leaves, cabbage leaves, pita triangles, carrots, celery….. it lends itself to being a dipping favorite.
Ted thought the dip needed more lemon. I thought the dip was perfect. The solution: add lemon slices on the side to customize for personal prefences. Sometimes the garlic flavor will be very overwhelming but in these two recipes, both cooks offered a mixture that was nicely balanced.
What’s your favorite way to make humus? Have you ever had it before and ….how do YOU spell it?
The following comment was made by Linda B. from Gather:
Two ‘m’s…..and while I make it myself, I like my sister’s best of all. She learned to make it from my brother-in-law, who is from Iran.
I’m told that an Americanized version can be made with cannellini beans or black-eyed peas but I haven’t tried to find a recipe for either version.
The best kind I’ve ever made was using cooked chickpeas, roasted red bell peppers–(which I roasted myself and used the pepper juices in the hummus), roasted garlic (ditto, fresh, home-roasted is best), sea salt, black pepper from a grinder, fresh-squeezed lemon juice (high proportion of this–I used up the pepper juices first and topped up the liquid requirement with lemon juice), tahini and a very high quality olive oil. Blending it all in the food processor makes it very smooth; waiting to whisk in the olive oil afterwards means you wind up with a coarser dip, which I prefer.
The tahini has to be stirred back together before using since it separates during shipping. If I want the hummus to have a really thick spreadable quality, I dig up the solids from the bottom of the tahini jar and use that instead of the more liquid re-blended tahini.
Yor hummus looks amazing and I really love the bread sticks to dip in Mmmmmmm!