AAF’s Recipe of the Day
Written by Asinus Asinum Fricat on May 18, 2008 – 11:39 am -Hummus, as requested by Vigilant Meerkat! The trick with this wonderful dip is to cook the garbanzo beans yourself rather than buy the tinned stuff which can taste odd at times.
Start with buying a pound of dried garbanzo beans, soak overnight, rinse & drain well, and plunge into salted boiling water in which you add the juice of 2 lemons and 2 tbsp of olive oil. Cook slowly, it may take 2 to 3 hours but do it well, it’s well worth the effort. When cooked, drain & cool. You’ll need this by your food processor: for your pound of cooked garbanzo beans you will add 200 grams of Tahini paste (pureed sesame), the juice of 4 lemons, a large pinch of sweet paprika, 8 to 10 garlic cloves, and a generous dash of virgin olive oil. Process to your desired texture, pour into a dish, and on top pour a little olive oil and a dash of paprika for effect! Great with warm Lebanese bread (see below)
Tags: Hummus, Lebanese Flat Bread, Middle East Food, Recipe
Posted in Food, Recipes |
So, where’s VM when we need her??
Right below you. Where are the responses to my queries?
What quantity does this recipe make? Two cups, three cups, or?
I don’t think in cups or in grams but in the final product. Once you have followed the recipe you will know what you want to keep fresh and what you need to freeze. THat way, next time you make another batch, you will know how to proceed. Generally speaking, to become a good cook, you must take chances and try your hand with a wide variety of foodstuffs, become a little adventurous…and throw caution to the wind. That’s precisely how I became a famous chef, I kept on trying new stuff, kept finding new ways of cooking this and that, and believe me, I wasn’t always successful, I’ve made my share of booboos in the past. But perseverance
is the name of the game.
You are presumptious. I am adventurous, but I’m also an attorney. We are not prone to throwing caution to the wind, my dear. Ruination lies in that direction. I also take chances, big ones. I always have. You’re simply hearing my attorney voice here. Give it some time; I’ve only been retired for a couple of months. Loosening up takes a bit of time. My creativity soon will begin to expand beyond analyzing legal issue and writing about them for seven demanding judges. It’s not an overnight transition. And by the way, I don’t usually measure when I do cook. I like to operate from the intuitive side of my nature. And I am a good cook. But I’ll never be a great chef.
Good to hear, I obviously misread you. I used to teach at East Sydney Tech when I had spare time, and the first thing I used to say is “Throw the book! And caution!” It worked. Mind you, this may apply to quite a few other trades as well.
Well throwing caution to the wind sometimes applies in litigation and at trial; desperation measures and all of that. But it does not apply when you are a staff attorney for a high court where the “rule of law” and precendent are the primary considerations.
Thank you AAF. I have not been cooking my own garbanzos, so I’m sure that will make a big difference. And I find it quite interesting that you add lemon and olive oil to the cooking liquid. I will try that. So how many cups of cooked beans to you get out of a pound? I have a very small blender (3 cups), so perhaps a half pound would work for me. I guess I could cook a pound of beans and freeze half for another batch. That should work.
How much is a gram, in U.S. measurements? And what type tahini do you use? I’ve been using a Middle Eastern brand because I don’t much care for the organic brands. Also, I’m shocked that you are using 8 cloves of garlic. Seems like a lot. Well, I’m going to try this for my next batch. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
VM, I’m writing a whole diary about Imperial measurements conversion to Metric, for your edification, and for our users. It will be posted as soon as I finish putting all the data together, I suggest you bookmark it.
Great idea. Too bad we weren’t taught metrics in school here. I have a terrible time purchasing food in Europe. I can never tell how much something costs, when it’s by the gram or some other metric.
Here’s a cool trick you can use for straightforward conversions. If you type “200 grams in ounces” into google (without the quotation marks) it comes back with: 200 grams = 7.05479239 ounces
You can use this for lots of kinds of conversions. Want to convert speed from kph to furlongs per fortnight? No problem:
100 kph = 167 024.576 furlongs per fortnight
This won’t tell you how many cups of beans there are in a pound though, for that you need a special volume to weight chart for ingredients.
You are so clever sarahnity. I’ll try that.
Mmmmm, yummus!
I’ve always had miserable luck making it. And I seem to recall, I’m not much better cooking my own chickpeas. Now lentils and split peas and pintos and whites, I’m great at. But chickpeas, I dunno.
But I’ll try this method WHEN (not if, but WHEN) I move into The Bunker. Maybe it will work for me?
I’ve had the same experience trying to cook chickpeas. They take a long time to reach the proper consistency. In fact, one batch I cooked never, ever, ever got to the point where it could be blended into anything other than a highly chunky paste, even after I added all sorts of liquids to help things along. Perhaps they need to be soaked for 24 hours instead of overnight. I might try that.
I also think that, sometimes, the beans are just old, especially with the less common to the American market varieties, like chickpeas.
It’s one reason I don’t buy sale dried beans, except for lentils and split peas which apparently sell so quickly, they rarely get old and tough.
Follow my instructions to the hilt and you will be recompensed with a proper hummus. Deviate and you will be lost.
I’m making this my tagline … somewhere. I don’t know where yet, but somewhere.
One more query. What is the optimum shelf life for dried chickpeas. The ones I have are probably two years old. I guess I should purchase some fresh dried chickpeas. Or does it really matter?
I’ve never had that problem so I’m not sure but I’d venture an educated guess: they’re still good. In any case you will soon find out.
If you think they are too old for cooking, throw the dried beans in your food processor with the steel blade and turn them into flour. It sounds like you are grinding up ball bearings, but hey, free chickpea flour!
Too right! I used chickpea flour to make sun-dried tomato & olive bread, with great results.
It’s easy to make and yes, it can be frozen in batches. Just sprinkle a little oil and paprika on top when it’s thawed.
28 grams in an ounce. Ahem.
See my reply to VM…above…
So 200 grams would be a bit over 8 ounces? Wouldn’t that be a cup? Sounds like a lot.
It is and that is why it’s so good.
And that’s why the large number of garlic cloves. We are talking about a big batch here. Well, I’m up for it. We’ll see how it goes.
Actually its 7.1 ounces (see above) to be precise.
Thank god ounces are noted on my large measuring cup so I can properly measure this.
That’s one thing I never understood in the States: what is a cup exactly? Whenever I used to look it up in cookbooks, it would have different answers. Give me grams!
A cup is 8 fluid ounces. Your dilemma probably comes from 2 things, we use ounces to measure weight and to measure volume and they don’t mean the same thing (except for water 1 ounce weight = 1 ounce volume). This, combined with the fact that you are used to measuring dry ingredients by weight, we measure them by volume brings extra confusion. Since a cup of flour (8 oz) does not weigh a half a pound (8 oz) you need to make sure you are using the right conversion table. Therefore, a cup of flour and a cup of sugar are different weights. When you factor in the fact that a cup of unsifted flour is different than a cup of sifted flour in weight it becomes even more confusing. The cool thing about measuring in cups when it comes to liquid ingredients is that 2 cups of water (16 oz.) weighs a pound (16 oz.)
I daresay we have the better system, the metric one, that is. I love when things are rounded: a kilogram is 1,000 grams, no more no less, and no cups! LOL.
Hey, you are preaching to the choir here. I’m a big fan of metric, I’m an engineer after all. The “furlongs per fortnight” thing I mentioned before came from an apocryphal story I hear when I worked for NASA.:
Some NASA scientists were giving a monthly mission status report to some government types. In it they made reference to some speeds using meters/sec units. The government gys says, “We’re American! I don’t want to see any of those crazy European units. Next time give me the speed in American units!” So the next month they show up with everything translated into furlongs per fortnight.
But at least we don’t measure weight in “stones”. What the hell are those anyhow???
I think a stone is 14 pounds.
16. Here’s a cool link for instant conversions: http://www.metric-conversions.org/weight/pounds-to-stones.htm
That’s the English Imperial weight measure thinghy, nothing to do with us “real” Europeans! We’ve had the Metric system since Napoleon, and the English are still stuck in theirs.
Mr/ VM scored some great tahini at Trader Joe’s. This is what I have been missing. It’s very thick and has a great flavor. The Middle Eastern tahini is thin and doesn’t seem to firm up much, even when chilled. This is a true find. Now I am ready to make some killer hummus.
That’s the shot! Let me know how it turns out! And yes, 8 cloves of garlic is not too much….
Oh man, this is a bento box just waiting to happen! Yummy! I’ve never made my own hummus, but that is about to change.
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