Everything from Scratch: Hummus and Crackers

Hello Friends! It’s Week 6 of The Food Matters Project. This Monday’s recipe was chosen by Erin of Naturally Ella… Hummus Served Hot. Go on over and visit her beautiful blog for Mark Bittman’s original recipe. I had so much fun deciding what flavors to use with my hummus and what to serve it with other than fresh veggies. After perusing books and blogs, I settled on making crackers from scratch using Deb’s (Smitten Kitchen) Spelt Everything Crackers and Joy’s (Joy the Baker) Sea Salt and Poppy Seed Crackers sans the sea salt because I forgot to add it in.

Chickpeas, garbanzo beans… My sister, Therese, loves plain, boiled garbanzo beans, but I never cared much for it. That was, until I met hummus. When I came to Washington to live with Sally and Bill, a snack would often be present on the kitchen counter a few hours before dinner. “This is a just a tide over,” Sally would say as she pushed snack plates towards me. One of my favorites is hummus, served in a pretty bowl with carrots, broccoli, sugar snap peas, or crackers. For the longest time, I wasn’t aware that it’s the same garbanzo beans disguised as a flavorful, creamy dip that makes everything it touches taste amazing. The absolute, perfect snack after a day of driving to and from school, reading a book, helping pull weeds or thistles in the pasture, or just tottering after Sally at the farm.

My favorite use of hummus is in sandwiches. I would take that over mayonnaise anytime! As much as I like hummus, I have never thought of making my own. It always seemed like such a production, so I always settled for good old Sabra, my favorite brand. However, after making my own hummus for the very first time today, I realized how tasty, healthy, and cheap it is to do so. It makes me feel so happy to know that I am not ingesting weird ingredients because I know exactly what is in my hummus. Plus, I get to just take small batches of it and tweak the flavors any way I want to.

I thought about creative uses for hummus other than as a dip or sandwich spread… but in the end, creative juices did not really come out, I decided to stick to special memories of hummus from my days of living in Sally’s farm and served it the Sally way… with veggies and crackers. DFJ and I had this as an appetizer tonight and to be honest, I think I could have done better with the flavorings. Although what I did was still good, it just seemed to lack something…

I soaked my garbanzo beans overnight and cooked it for a little over an hour. Canned would work just as well too, but I like the taste of freshly cooked beans better. These were the ingredients that I added in my big batch, as per Mark Bittman's suggestions:

½ tsp cumin
½ tsp curry
½ tsp smoked paprika
½ tsp cayenne
3 Tbsp Pecorino Romano, grated
handful of pistachios, shelled and chopped, as garnish

I’m taking some of this hummus to my book club meeting tonight and am still plotting on what else I can do to add to that missing flavor. Perhaps some pimiento stuffed green olives, more cheese, more lemon juice, or just bump up the salt and a good helping of garam masala. Any suggestions?

P.S.
I’m writing this post script the morning after I made this hummus. Guess what? There’s a reason why Mark Bittman calls this recipe, Hummus Served Hot. Since I made mine an hour after the garbanzo beans were cooked, I thought it would count as hot because it was still kind of warm after being blended and jazzed up. UH, NO. So, this morning, I heated some hummus up on a skillet to eat with eggs on toast. Oh my, what a world of difference. Heating the hummus brought out so much flavor. It was so good! I guess I found the solution to my problem: Serve it HOT!     

P.P.S.

Suggestions on add-ins are still accepted! J