Saturday Night Hummus

Last night, Warren and I planned a double hummus date with our friends Luis Mi and Diana. Although we love all of our friends, we really appreciate it when we can spend time with another couple. (Warren especially appreciates it, since most of our other friends are girls.) Plus, it's fun to have them over because Diana doesn't speak very much English, and it makes the conversations we have more challenging, but in a good way.

I made way more food than we could have ever eaten, but we certainly made an attempt. Pictured below: four types of hummus, lots of veggies, crackers, chips, and pitas for dipping into the hummus, bruschetta topping and baguette slices, pesto, garlic dip, and roasted red pepper dip.





We also had pineapple and grapes for dessert. Yum!

The four types of hummus I made were roasted red pepper, green olive, roasted garlic and red onion, and fajita spice. They were all good in their own way. My favorite is green olive, but honestly all four rocked. Many thanks to Kristin and her roommate, Kelsi, at Coffee, Calculations, and Colombia for passing on their hummus recipe. We've basically eaten hummus everyday for three weeks.

My own hummus recipe is a bit different now that I've learned how to do it, so I'm going to share it. You know, just to add to the millions of other hummus recipes in internet land.

Ingredients:
1 can of garbanzo beans
1 tbsp tahini
2 tablespoons (or more, depending on how much citrus you like) of lime juice
1 teaspoon orange juice (makes the lime less powerful)
4 or more cloves of roasted garlic*
water and olive oil (I add about 1 tablespoon of olive oil initially and then add more oil and water as needed. Water makes it really creamy and gives it a lighter texture. I probably put around 1/4 cup of water in each batch, but only a bit at a time so I know if it's getting too watery.)
paprika, sea salt, and white pepper to taste
Whatever "flavoring" you want to add.

To roast garlic, take however many cloves you are using, don't peel them, and wrap them up in foil with a little olive oil drizzled over the top of them. Then roast in a 450 degree oven for 10-15 minutes. When they are finished, you can just squeeze the cloves out of the peel. Yum!

Directions: As Kelsi suggested, I rinse the beans really well and then cook them. I usually let them boil for 5 minutes or more. While they are cooking, I put the lime/orange juice, tahini, garlic, and my flavoring* in the blender. When they are finished, add the drained garbanzo beans and about a tablespoon of olive oil to the blender. Blend well. If you have trouble blending, add water and a tiny bit of olive oil or citrus juice. When the mixture is smooth, add spices. Blend again until it looks perfectly creamy. Chill and then eat!

*Flavorings:
1. To make green olive hummus, add about 1/2 cup of green olives (or more if you love them) to the blender. Don't add any salt to this hummus. The olives are already salty.
2. To make roasted red pepper hummus, I add two roasted red peppers. (See Kelsi's directions in the blog link above.) I also add a lot of paprika and red pepper powder.
3. For roasted garlic and red onion, I add an entire bulb of roasted garlic and HALF of a large roasted red onion (do it the same way as the garlic), along with a little more citrus juice instead of water. I also add a lot of pepper.
4. For fajita spice hummus, I cheated. I added 1/2 a package of Old El Paso (I found it at Exito) fajita spice mix. Hooray for MSG. I also added a lot of pepper, paprika, and red pepper powder. I would normally use chipotle and other various yummy Tex-Mex spices, but I can't find them here.