Garlic Chickpea Hummus
Appetizers Simple Recipes Fasting Recipes Vegetables Gluten-Free Recipes
A reminder of how healthy and delicious artisanal oil is in combination with any legumes. I've used it before in red bean salad with onions or bean and chestnut salad. It delighted me this time too, in combination with chickpeas.
I buy cold-pressed sunflower oil (artisanal) from the farmers market, but it can also be found at organic stores. You may have noticed lately that I encourage you to find sources of local, natural and flavorful ingredients. I've had many advantages from this and I believe you will feel it too. The simpler the food becomes, the tastier it gets, and at the same time it shows in your budget. Over time I've tracked my food expenses and since I've been cooking as seasonally as possible with local ingredients, they've dropped dramatically. I think this shows in my cooking style over the last two years; it seems to me it has changed a lot since I started writing on this site. Related to this, I read a phrase over the weekend that I simply felt in every cell of my being: "Simplicity is not a goal in art, but you arrive at simplicity involuntarily, approaching the real meaning of things. (Brancusi)"
Ingredients
450g cooked chickpeas
50ml cold-pressed sunflower oil (artisanal)
150-180ml chickpea cooking water
garlic mayonnaise or garlic sauce (from 3 not too large garlic cloves)
salt, black pepper, sesame seeds
How to prepare garlic chickpea hummus
- Cook the chickpeas following the standard instructions (this time you can use baking soda to make the hummus creamier; after cooking you can remove the transparent skins from the chickpeas to make the hummus smoother). Drain and weigh 450g of chickpeas. Reserve about 200ml of the chickpea cooking water.
- Place in a food processor/blender together with the oil, a little salt and ground black pepper. Blend well until the chickpeas are crushed. With the processor running, slowly add the water and blend until you have a thick paste (I used about 180ml of water). Stop the processor and taste for salt, add more if needed.
- Then start gradually adding the garlic mayonnaise or garlic sauce, 1 teaspoon at a time. Blend, taste and continue adding until you have the desired garlicky flavor.
* generally I prefer to use garlic mayonnaise for this type of spread; but it's made with milk, so for fasting you can crush 3 garlic cloves in a mortar with some coarse salt; then slowly drizzle in neutral oil while stirring until you get a fluffy garlic sauce. You'll use as much of this sauce as needed so the spread is pleasantly flavored; using garlic sauce instead of simply crushed garlic eliminates the risk of the chickpea spread getting a sharp garlic taste - After the spread is seasoned to your taste, let the processor blend for another 1 minute at high speed, so the hummus becomes as smooth as possible.
- Put the hummus in a jar, level it and cover with a thin layer of neutral oil and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Store in the refrigerator. It's great with whole wheat flatbread or rustic bread.
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