Hummus

There is one kind of of food which most people enjoy more like meat balls, spaghetti with bolognese sauce or chicken wings. There is another kind of food that people tend to ignore as leek soup, artichoke and the poor, old chickpeas. Although they are delicious and go perfectly with meat and rice, we somehow forget about them. As unsatisfactory as they may seem, they can turn into wonders in the right hands. In this particular case, my hands!

This is one masterpiece from the Lebanese cuisine and goes perfectly with toasted bread and a glass of raki.

Time: 50 minutes Level : Easy Yield: 10 - 12 servings

Ingredients

500 gr of chickpeas

200 gr of sesame seed paste

130 ml of water (if needed)

50 ml of extra virgin olive oil

3 lemons

5 cloves of garlic

Salt

For the top

Red pepper

Extra virgin olive oil

2-3 leaves of coriander

Hints

Chickpeas may take up to 1-2 hours to cook. You may either use a pressure cooker or leave them in water for about 12 hours before starting the actual cooking. Both ways you will reduce to cooking time to 30 minutes.

It is best that you peel the chickpeas once they are finely boiled. Not an easy job, I don't deny but it makes it much easier to digest the chickpeas without the skin.

Preparation

Put all of the chickpeas into the pressure cooker with enough water to cover them all. Cook for 30 minutes. Once they are finely boiled and softened, let them cool in a large bowl for a couple of minutes and start peeling. Since they are finely boiled, you will see the skin will come off once you squeeze them between your thumb and index finger.

Once the peeling is over, put the chickpeas into the food processor and start crushing them till they have a similar texture as mashed potatoes. Get them back into a large mixing bowl.

Now from this point on we will go by the instinct. You may have a different taste playing the amount of the ingredients you add so it is up to your personal taste where to stop adding one specific ingredient.

Squeeze the lemons and crush the garlic. Put all of the sesame seed paste to the mashed chickpeas. Add the garlic, salt, lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil. Mix them altogether till the texture is creamy like. Lemon juice will lighten the colour of the mixture which is an expected effect. If the taste is perfect but the texture is still not creamy, add water to fine-tune.

Prepare the sauce of red pepper with olive oil and put on the top of hummus and give some colour with a couple of leaves of coriander.