Not your average hummus

Last week at work, Melanie was eating spinach and artichoke hummus.

That sounded delicious to me, so guess what I did?

I searched until I found a recipe that appealed to me. My search wasn't as easy as I had expected it to be. A lot of Spinach and Artichoke dips popped up. I had to weed through them to find the hummus version. A hummus version that didn't require baking or cooking.

I want to throw everything into the food processor and pulse it 'till it's right.

Which can only mean one thing. If I'm writing about it, I made it.

The recipe I found was on a blog. And the writer actually did suggest cooking the spinach. But, "ain't nobody got time for 'dat" so that was when I searched again and randomly picked another recipe which did not require cooking.

Back to the original recipe/blog. She suggested "popping" all of the garbanzo beans out of their shells. She said it would make for a creamier hummus.

Now I haven't made hummus since we lived in Savannah (I think) and I burned out the motor on our poor little small capacity mini food processor.

The hummus I remember making wasn't as creamy as I had hoped. This blogger said that by removing the shells your result would be a creamier hummus.

Bingo!

So I grabbed a bowl, the empty garbanzo bean can, and the strainer full of rinsed garbanzo beans and plopped myself in front of the tv. I watched an hour long show on the DVR in the time I shelled all the beans (two cans worth). Which means I spent forty-five minutes working on those beans.

It really wasn't that difficult to do, just a little time consuming. Actually, I found it to be slightly therapeutic; popping each bean out of the shell.

Then, I got to work making the hummus. I tried it that night and it was good. The blog suggested I let it sit overnight to let all the flavors meld. When I tried it the next day, it was even better.

I have a few friends who lovingly tease me about all the homemade things I make. Like homemade syrup (I don't tap a tree, I just use brown sugar), or homemade peanut butter.

This reminded me of the peanut butter. I shelled every single peanut. I think it took me around two hours (I wasn't paying attention, all I remember is I was watching the Olympics, I think it took around two hours though). But in that case, the results were minimal. The peanut butter was good, but the pound or two of peanuts I had shelled resulted in a teeny tiny dish of peanut butter. I'd rather pay for the natural stuff at the store.

For hummus, it's the opposite. The price of a can of beans (or for this recipe two cans) far outweighs the cost of ready-made hummus. It's the tahini that gets you at the beginning. But that too eventually pays for itself because I used all of two tablespoons for this recipe. The tahini comes in a 16oz. jar. That means I can make hummus fifteen more times.

As I think about all the additions, I start to wonder which is actually cheaper, but since I keep the other ingredients on-hand (olive oil, garlic, spinach, artichokes, salt & pepper), I'm calling it a moot point.

Then, add in all the work it takes. Shelling the beans; time-consuming but definitely made for a creamier hummus. The food processor did the rest of the work.

I think the hummus speaks for itself and I will continue making it from scratch. Which means I'll have the money to buy orange juice. But that's another post for another time.

it's time for making dinner with the ingredients we have...

...instead of using the ingredients the recipe calls for.

Tonight the recipe was: gnocchi, sweet corn and arugula in a cream sauce.

I made: pierogies, sweet corn and spinach in a cream sauce. 

In addition I added sauteed some onion in olive oil before making the cream sauce.

It was good. And basically still the same dish.

Do you agree that gnocchi and pierogies are the same thing, just from different countries? Okay, gnocchi is supposed to have ricotta; the addition of potato to gnocchi is a "recent innovation". While pierogie are always potato and are typically cooked with onion. (I get points for doing that, even though I didn't know it was the traditional way.) Both are called "dumplings", hence the similarity.

I am getting much better at being creative in the kitchen. I still can't whip up a dish out of nothing, like Bill's infamous Beef Burgundy, but I can figure out what will go with this or that and find things to try.

The trouble is remembering it for next time if we really liked it.