One thing I often find myself making regularly is hummus. The reason? I eat it on sandwiches at lunch time pretty much every day. Its expensive if you buy it at the store and dead easy to make. So more often than not I make it. Last week I made a variation of it using purple hulled peas. However, that batch is almost gone so I need to make so more. My recipe is pretty simple.
1 15 oz can of garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed. IMHO they’re too salty if you don’t rinse them
1/4 cup tahini or 3 tbs peanut butter and 1 tbs olive oil
3 tbs lemon juice
1 tbs olive oil
3 – 5 cloves garlic chopped
1/4 tsp paprika
1/4 cup fresh flat leaf parsley chopped
1/4 tsp salt
Put all the ingredients except parsley in a small food process or blender. Blend until smooth. Stir in parsley. Cover and keep in the refrigerator for up to a week.
My experience is that the hummus is pretty stiff if you keep it in the fridge. This is fine by me because as I said I make sandwiches with it. However, if you’re going to use it as a dip you probably want to take it out of the fridge and stir in a bit of olive oil before serving to make the consistency a bit thinner.
Hummus is just one dip/spread made from legumes. A while back I made a red lentil spread/dip that was really good as well. Other options are
- Foul Mudammes – a Middle Eastern fava bean (and sometimes garbanzo bean) dish that originated in Egypt.
- White bean or cannellini bean dip – common to Italy
- Fava dip – A Greek dip actually made from yellow split peas aka lentils not fava beans
Whatever your pleasure there are lots of options for the legume base which for me is really great because it provides variety for my sandwich fillings!