Hummus

I have a thing for Greek, Lebanese and Middle Eastern cuisine. I may not have the origins correct, but that is the way the restaurants market their food around here. There’s a restaurant near my office that serves great chicken shawarma, gyros, baklava and hummus. I try to eat there for lunch at least once a week. Maybe it’s my craving for garlic, feta cheese, or seared meat, but I get hungry thinking about it. For my next series of post I will share some fo my own recipes.

Hummus is a very simple dish to make if you have a food processor. This recipe is very basic and can be made in less than 10 minutes.  It makes a great side dish or serve it as an appetizer with pita bread or pita chips. Once you get the hang of the basic recipe, the sky is the limit in variations – just add an extra ingredient such as roasted garlic, roasted red peppers, sun-dried tomatoes, etc.

Ingredients:

2 cans of garbanzo beans (chickpeas) drained, but reserve the juice.
1/3 cup tahini (sesame paste)*
2 tbsp minced garlic
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp olive oil

Method:

Add first five ingredients to food processor and put it to work. When it becomes the consistency of paste, slowly drizzle in the olive oil while the processor is running. If it is still to pasty, begin drizzling in the reserved juice from the beans 1/4 cup at a time until you get your desired consistency. Now taste and if needed, adjust to your liking by adding more garlic, lemon or salt.

*If you can not find tahini increase the olive oil by this amount.