Traditional Hummous

I've been in a very Middle-Eastern mood lately. After the tabbouleh recipe, I've been practicing with other more traditional recipes, and decided to wing it with a hummous recipe.

I've always loved hummous (or hummus), but the packaged hummous just doesn't cut it in comparison to home made. The great thing about this recipe is that it's a wonderful base hummous. It's delicious on its own, but can be embellished in any way, which is why I'm posting this instead of one of my more involved, fancy recipes. I generally eat hummous with raw veggies, or gluten-free vegan breads. I made savory sprouted buckwheat muffins (that didn't turn out good enough to post, unfortunately) and sliced them up and toasted them... It was fabulous!

Some more ingredient ideas would be: spinach, sun-dried tomatoes, roasted red peppers, olives, pine nuts, cumin, coriander, toasted almonds, or even something sweet and spicy like pear and cayenne. Hmm.. ideas abound!

Traditional Hummus

3 cups chickpeas, cooked and deskinned
4 Tb. very thick tahini
1/4 water
1/4-1/2 cup olive oil (add less oil and more water if you're cutting fat)
3 Tb. lemon juice
1/2 tsp. salt, to taste
1/2 tsp. Hungarian paprika
2 cloves roasted garlic
pinch of white pepper

In the food processor, add everything but the olive oil. Blend until mostly smooth, and then drizzle the oil in an even stream until everything is creamy. Garnish with olive oil, paprika, and some salted, dried olives.

Oh, and I just want to touch on one thing. If you want to make the really creamy, smooth, traditional hummous, you'll need to skin the chickpeas. Leaving the skins on makes it a bit more grainy, and I've found it makes everyone gassy. Ew. To skin them, pinch the fatter end of the chickpea, and squeeze until the pea is released from the skin. Here's my bowl of skins! :)