Ingredients:
1 15-oz. can garbanzo beans (chick peas)
2 cloves garlic, crushed
4 Tb tahini (Greek paste of ground sesame seeds, available in the ethnic section of most grocery stores)
6 Tb lemon juice
4+ Tb extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp ground cumin
salt and ground black pepper, to taste
Directions:
1. Drain the liquid from the beans into a bowl and set aside.
2. In a blender or food processor, preferably one from 1978 (those things never die and are always at top performance), process the drained beans into a smooth, stiff paste, using the liquid sparingly as necessary. Discard remaining liquid.
3. In a bowl, combine the garlic, tahini and lemon juice. Pour over the beans in the processor.
4. Mix.
5. Listen to sudden, strange thumps coming from the other side of your apartment. Step into the hall to listen -- it sounds like something sliding, dragging, and thudding, but it's not your neighbor in the entryway outside your door. Listen to your cat growl from your bedroom window. With your heart in your throat, tiptoe to the bedroom expecting to see a head in your window.
6. AAAAAH! There's a head in your window! Swallow your heart. Notice that the head is furry and not human. Walk toward your bristling cat in the windowsill and wonder aloud how a cat got on the roof. Notice that the head is the wrong shape for a cat. Conclude, correctly, that it is a raccoon. A dirty, round raccoon slapping at the screen and upsetting your cat.
7. Pull your cat away from the windowsill with terrors of rabies in your soul. Let curiosity get the better of you and stick your head against the screen to see the raccoon retreated further up the roof. Cluck and chirrup at it until it crawls down to see what you are. Watch it scramble away when it catches your human scent.
8. Shut the window and wonder if this accounts for your cat's odd behavior lately. Feel a little less secure in the supremacy of your human dominion. Realize that the wild is everywhere...just a millimeter past your screen. A house is in itself insufficient protection. Feel a little creeped out by the ambiguous voyeur-robber tendencies of raccoons.
9. Keep an eye on your cat and watch the raccoon come back to the window and put its face right against the screen. Watch your cat leap nervously away from the window. Reach out and bang the glass with the flat of your hand and crack the brittle windowpane. Resolve to call your landlord about replacing the window, which in all fairness has been cracked since you moved in.
10. Return to the kitchen. Vow to take your cat to the vet as soon as possible for renewed shots.
11. Add olive oil to contents of blender, a little at a time, until the paste loses its stiffness and achieves a smooth, semi-solid consistency.
12. Add seasoning. Mix. Season further to taste.
13. Scrape hummus into a bowl, cover, and refrigerate until needed. Serve with pita.
2 comments:
Reaction:
1. Think: 15 oz of chick peas? That'll make an awful lot of hummus, won't it?
2. Read about the face at the window. Get freaked out on your behalf.
3. Continue reading through point 10. Laugh not quite hard enough to choke, but close.
4. Become hungry for homemade hummus with pita.
5. Post response, because no one else has yet.
Response:
1. 15 oz. chick peas makes enough to fill your average cereal/soup bowl. As it keeps for up to three weeks (thanks to the garlic, which is mold/bacteria resistant), it's perfect for long-term snacking; or that much is good for a few light meals, or a party.
2. The recipe, raccoons notwithstanding, is exceptionally viable and very easy. I'm still experimenting with it; I may try to use only one clove of garlic next time. It's the recipe I'm always trying to perfect.
3. I can't wait for Homecoming!!
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