Creamy, butter smooth and lush. That’s the best way to describe this flavourful puree of chickpeas. No gritty textured hummus here, just buttery smoothness. How to achieve that? Only one way. Remove the skins of the chickpeas. Is it a chore to remove them? Yes! But wait, I have a method that removes them painlessly, in copious amounts while keeping washing up to a minimum. Removing the peels one at a time would certainly drive me berserk and so would having to take out another pan or kitchen gadget!
I have made hummus with and without removing the outer skins. Skinless is the way to go. I have a rather powerful food processor that I could not live without. It can pretty much pulverise wet ingredients to the smoothness of a face cream. When I grind chickpeas with the skins on, it does get it very smooth. So why do I bother to remove the skins? I bother because the hummus gets unbelievably smoother (just look at the images) and the extra bonus is, without the skins, there is a clean taste of chickpeas with none of that slight bitterness from the skins. Use my way of dislodging the skins off the chickpeas. It takes just a few minutes. Curious. Do read on. This hummus was served as part of a meze at a recent party, read more about what else I cooked up and look at the dishes I had prepared by scrolling all the way down to ‘What’s Coming Up Next?’
Hummus With Spiced Up Angus Beef
| Prep: | 10 minutes |
| Cook: | 30 minutes |
| Inactive: | – |
| Level: | Easy |
| Serves: | 6 as part of a meze |
| Oven Temperature: | – |
| Can recipe be doubled? | Yes. |
| Make ahead? | Up to 3 days. Keep covered and refrigerated. |
Ingredients1 cup=250ml=8.45US fl oz * Made from sesame seeds that have been ground to a paste with the help of a little neutral tasting oil. It can be purchased locally in better stocked supermarkets. * If you do not have all of the dried powders, use a combination of whatever you have in your pantry. |
Method
Soaking chickpeas
1. Pick over dried chickpeas. Remove any dark coloured ones or those that look too shrivelled up. Discard.
2. Rinse chickpeas. In a large basin, soak chickpeas in water twice the volume of chickpeas. Set aside overnight and up to 12 hours.
3. If you cannot attend to the chickpeas after 12 hours, change water every 2 hours until you are ready to use them.
Cooking chickpeas
1. When ready to cook, rinse and drain chickpeas into a colander. You will be reusing the large basin and colander again, so set them aside.
2. Transfer chickpeas into a pot and cover with water at least 2″ (5cm) above the level of chickpeas.
3. Add ~1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda. Bring to a boil and lower heat to medium-high.
4. You will see white scum float to the surface. Use a kitchen strainer or skimmer ladle to skim off.
5. After ~20 minutes, the chickpeas might look discouragingly mushy. Remove a chickpea. Press it between your thumb and fingers. If you can turn it to mash easily, your chickpeas are ready. If you cannot, continue boiling and retest. The older the chickpeas, the longer it will take to cook.
Removing chickpea skins
1. Drain the chickpeas into the colander that you had set aside earlier.
2. Fill the large basin with water to reach 3/4 full.
3. Transfer chickpeas into the basin of water.
4. Skim off the chickpea skins floating on the water. Use your skimmer or hands to help dislodge any other skins still attached to any chickpeas.
5. Drain chickpeas. You should have ~3 cups and not all of the chickpeas would have kept its shape. That’s fine. Set aside.
Puree ingredients
1. Into the food processor, add the 5 Tablespoons of lemon juice, 1/2 cup of iced water, 4 cloves of minced garlic and 1 teaspoon salt in that order. Why in that order? When you add liquids in first, it helps the blade to run more smoothly than if you were to add the chickpeas and the rather thick tahini into the food processor first.
2. Next, add chickpeas and tahini.
3. Process until you have a very smooth paste.
4. Thin with more iced water if you prefer a thinner consistency.
5. Taste. Adjust seasoning. Add more lemon juice or garlic at this point.
6. Transfer to your serving dish. Create a well in the centre for the beef. Cover and set aside.
Flash fry beef
1. 10 minutes before you are ready to fry the beef, season it with all the dried seasoning powders and salt.
2. Heat up the oil in a frying pan over medium high heat. Add the beef and fry quickly for 5 minutes or until the beef is almost no longer pink. Turn off the heat. Taste and adjust seasonings. Continue stir frying in the residual heat until meat is no longer pink.
To assemble
1. Quickly transfer the meat, without the grease, into the well you had created for it in the dish of hummus.
2. Sprinkle the parsley. Drizzle extra virgin olive oil. Sprinkle over chilli powder or sesame seeds.
3. You could also serve them in individual portions (image in introduction) with petite sized flat bread as I did.
Tips
Bottle the hummus and give them out as gifts or take them to a potluck party
One usually receives bottled jams and chutneys as gifts but hummus? Yes, they do make welcome gifts. No one has ever returned them back to me. Although I do check to make sure that they like hummus to begin with.
Swirls of super smooth buttery goodness.
Use hummus in a sandwich
For a vegetarian version: sandwich fried thick slabs of firm tofu that has been salted, then slather with hummus and strewn over some kabis or pickles of your choice and squirt some sweet chilli sauce. This sandwich has a good mix of textures and flavours.
For a non vegetarian version: sandwich Beef Kefta (Lebanese Meatballs – image on table of meze below) or any other kind of meatball or perhaps some sliced steak, slather over with hummus, shredded iceberg lettuce and some Tabasco sauce.
WHAT’S COMING UP NEXT?
A Moroccan inspired, Radish, Bell Pepper and Mint Salad. It goes particularly well with grilled meats. In fact, I have dressed a plateful of thinly sliced angus beef steaks with this salad. It can then be served as a main or side course.
To recap, this post is part of my series on Meze, A Selection of Wonderful Little Bites. I love the year-end period. Things start to wind down and people seem more relaxed. The shops will be dressed up. There will be lots of tinsel bling in town and food that I only get to see during the festive period start reappearing on the shelves. This is also the time of the year when kitchens invariably get busier. With that in mind, I thought it would be useful to post some recipes for pre-dinner bites that you could consider for your upcoming parties.
Here is a picture of my recent meze party. There was a delicious array of food to choose from and good home baked bread too. We didn’t need and would not have had space for a main course. A lot of these dishes can be made in advanced and that will free you some what on the day of the party from spending too much time in the kitchen. No one wants to be slogging away over a pot in a humid kitchen in their party gown!
To find out the names of and the recipes for the meze I served, please refer to the picture below.
First row:
Zaalouk – Moroccan Roasted Eggplants and Tomatoes;
Kabis – Lebanese Pickled Turnips and Beets;
Moroccan inspired Radish, Bell Peppers and Mint Salad;
Flash Fried Sweet Mini Bell Peppers.
Second row:
Greek inspired Shrimp with Tomatoes and Feta;
Hummus with Spiced Angus Beef Slices;
Beef Kafta – Lebanese inspired Meatballs.
Third row:
Labneh – Lebanese Drained Yogurt Drizzled With Extra Virgin Olive Oil And Clover Honey;
Moroccan inspired Roasted Green Bell Peppers and Tomatoes With Olives;
Fresh Figs With Peppered Ricotta.
kitchenbaroness
Great recipe. Hummus is yummy! I have a friend who cannot eat garlic. Is there an alternative or is it as tasty without the garlic?
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Hi. Thank you. This is one of my favourite things to eat and it tastes just as good without garlic.
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