The Recipe Room

This classical Arab dish, originally from Beirut, Libya, is a favourite the world over with vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike.  Hummus is incredibly quick and easy to make and once you’ve learned how to do it and I guarantee it will soon become one of your most useful recipes, and a real crowd pleaser too.

Hummus is high in iron and vitamin C, and the chickpeas provide a great source of dietary fibre.  When eaten with bread (the standard method), it provides a complete protein serving due to the mixing of grains and pulses and is therefore a very useful addition to vegetarian and vegan diets.

I usually serve this as a dip, with some kind of flatbread such as Pita or Naan for scooping up the Hummus, but it’s also great with chopped fresh veggies such as carrot or celery sticks, broccoli, red-peppers or even asparagus sticks.  As another interesting variation you can try adding half a red bell pepper to the blended ingredients, or even a jalapeño if you like it spicy or are feeling a bit daring.

Whatever you decide to do, one serving probably won’t be enough, so be sure to have enough ingredients on hand to make a second (or even third  and fourth) batch when your guests start clamouring for it, as I guarantee they will!

What you’re going to need:

• 1 can of cooked chickpeas
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 medium cloves of garlic
• ¼ cup lemon juice
• ½ cup tahini (sesame paste)
• 1 tbsp Greek yoghurt (plain yoghurt will do if you don’t have Greek to hand)
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp whole cumin seeds and/or 1 tsp paprika (for garnish)

What you have to do:

1. Put all the ingredients except the paprika and cumin seeds into an electric blender and blend until a smooth paste is formed.  Make sure the garlic gets blended well too.
2. If the mixture is too runny, add a little more tahini and chick peas until the desired consistency is reached.  If it’s too thick, add a little water and blend again.
3. Pour the mixture out onto a deep plate or shallow bowl and pat down with a spoon.
4. Splash a little olive on top and garnish with the cumin seeds and/or paprika.
5. Serve with pitta-bread, or slices of French bread, or crisps or crackers, or whatever you have on hand to dip with.

Preparation Time:  5 minutes

Cooking Time: n/a

Serves:  2-4

Difficulty: easy

Tags: chickpeas, cumin seeds, dip, flatbread, garlic, Greek yoghurt, hummus, lemon juice, moroccan hummus, olive oil, paprika, salt, sesame paste, tahini, vegetarian, yoghurt

This entry was posted on Tuesday, 14 February, 2012 at 1:26 pm by Serena Langley and is filed under Less than 30 minutes, Starters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the feed RSS 2.0. You can leave a comment, or make a trackback from your own blog.