The Daily Spud » Dips

Pease Glorious Pease

Daily Spud — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 18:21:54 +0000

Pease pudding and saveloys! What next is the question?

From the musical Oliver!‘s memorable “Food Glorious Food”

See, I’d always assumed (as, I might add, did the person who added the subtitles above), that the line was “peas, pudding and saveloys”. I may not have known what saveloys were, yet it seemed only natural to suppose them sugary and sweet – sure they had to be, didn’t they come after the peas and the puddin’. It made perfect sense to my childhood brain. As it turns out, though, I was mistaken on all counts.

To be fair, I’d need to have grown up in the north of England to be familiar with either pease pudding or saveloys – the former a kind of savoury pâté made from split peas and usually cooked with a bacon joint, the latter, a spicy pork sausage.

Beyond my experience though it was, however, it was pease pudding that sprang to mind when I lately happened upon some yellow split peas. The descriptions I had read of pease pudding as being a kind of pâté or hummus got me thinking – and this, gloriously, was the result.

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

Split Pea Hummus (aka Pease Pâté)

This is certainly not your usual hummus.

Apart from the fact that it uses yellow split peas in place of chickpeas, it forsakes tahini, olive oil and lemon juice in favour of fried onions, vegemite, mustard and sherry vinegar, with a more savoury end result.

If you’re not given to using vegemite (or similar pastes made from yeast extract, such as marmite), then go easy at first. They’re wonderfully savoury but are somewhat of an acquired taste and a little does goes a long way. If you don’t have (or don’t want to use) vegemite or similar here, you could probably try substituting some dark soy sauce for a different kind of savoury taste.

You’ll need:

225g yellow split peas
2 cloves garlic, very finely chopped
olive oil for frying
salt
2 medium-sized onions (about 350g), finely sliced
2 tsp vegemite or marmite or to taste
1.5 tsp dijon mustard or to taste
2.5 tsp sherry vinegar or to taste
freshly ground black pepper

You’ll also need:

A food processor for blending everything together, though you can mash everything together by hand if you need to.

The Steps:

Rinse the yellow split peas in several changes of water, then soak for 8-10 hours or overnight. Drain when ready to use.
Place a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan over a medium heat. When hot, add about a tblsp of olive oil and swirl around the pan. Add the chopped garlic and stir and fry for about a minute.
Add the split peas, a tsp of salt and about 1 litre of water to the saucepan. Bring to the boil, then cover, lower the heat and simmer until tender – should take around an hour or so.
Meanwhile, place a large frying pan over a medium heat. When hot, add about 2 tblsp olive oil. Add the sliced onions and a pinch or two of salt. Fry the onions, stirring periodically, until well browned, about 35-45 minutes.
When the split peas have finished cooking, drain them but reserve the cooking liquid. Add the split peas to your food processor along with most of the browned onions (reserving a few for garnish). Blend together well along with about 3 tblsp of the cooking liquid or more if you prefer a looser consistency (you can keep the rest of the liquid to use as a vegetable stock). If you don’t have a food processor, just mash the split peas using a fork, chop the browned onions very finely and mix in a bowl with the cooking liquid.
Now mix in the vegemite (or marmite), mustard and sherry vinegar. I’d suggest starting with about a tsp of each and add more to taste, along with a few twists of black pepper and salt if it needs it.
Garnish with the reserved onions and eat as a dip or spread onto bread as part of a cheddar cheese sandwich. I rather fancy that it would also go well with ham or even saveloys.

The Variations:

You could make something closer to traditional hummus by adding lemon juice and olive oil to your split peas instead of the vegemite, mustard and vinegar.

The Results:

About 600g of split pea “hummus”

Oh, and another thing….

It’s that time of year again and nominations are open for the Irish Blog Awards. The Irish food blogger scene has been blossoming in the past year, not to mention the fact that we’ve now got our very own association, which means there’s bound to be some pretty tasty competition in the food and drink category. So get your nominating socks on and give the nod to your favourite (ahem!) Irish food blog over here.

Spud Sunday: Of Hummus, Fries And Food Bloggers

Daily Spud — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 22:54:49 +0000

The scene:

A balmy Saturday evening in London, on a post-curry walk, somewhere in the vicinity of Bayswater.

Not that it’s entirely relevant, but the curry in question was a tandoori king prawn masala, and (cue licking of lips) very nice it was too.

The players:

In addition to yours truly, we have Bethany and Mayssam, 2 ladies with Lebanese backgrounds and, I suspect, a vast amount of hummus-eating experience. This fact is significant.

The background:

It was 24 hours since the massed participants at Food Blogger Connect 2010 had descended on the Hempel Hotel.

24 hours with much discussion of bloggery. From the how-do-I-make-money-at-this talk with Jaden to the craft of writing as discussed by Jeanne, Jamie and Kerrin and the low-down on cameras, photography and styling with Hilda, Meeta and Mowie.

24 hours of eating, drinking and making sure you scored a bowl of posh-looking fish, chips and mushy peas whenever they passed your way. And no little discussion of whether that dessert was crème brulée, as advertised, or, in fact, panna cotta. Be in no doubt, this was a group of people who liked to eat and talk about food. A lot.

It was inevitable, therefore, that the conversation following that Saturday evening’s curry would involve yet more food…

The post-curry conversation:

I don’t know who mentioned hummus and fries first, but both of my companions attested to the excellence of one with the other.

It stopped me – the potato lady – in my tracks.

Call them fries or call them chips, it had never occurred to me to dip them in hummus.

And while it seemed that some might baulk at the mere idea of it (just as they baulk at the thought of a chip butty), I immediately wondered where this combination had been all my life. Fries and hummus would be together on my plate at last. I was sure that they were going to be very happy.

The epilogue:

The trip to Food Blogger Connect might have been worthwhile for the hummus insight alone, but there was much else besides (for some lovely portraits from the event drop over to Mowie and for a run down of the food Sarah is your lady).

It was a joy to catch up with familiar bloggers, like Jamie, Adrienne and Pamela, and to meet new faces like Valentina, Heather, Julia, Anne, Giulia and so many more. My already hefty list of blogs to visit has put on some serious weight after last weekend. There’s nothing else for it but to make some obscenely healthy hummus. To go with a rather large order of fries.

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

Sprouted Chickpea Hummus

I have long been intrigued by the idea of making hummus using raw, sprouted chickpeas. In fact, every time I buy sprouted chickpea hummus from Natasha’s Living Food, I promise myself that I will attempt to recreate it at home. Today I finally kept that promise and made something approximating Natasha’s sprouted chickpea hummus with cumin and coriander.

The taste is quite different to regular hummus but equally tasty and (it being raw ‘n’ all), it’s just terribly healthy stuff. It does require a certain amount of forethought (4 days worth to be precise, in order to sprout the chickpeas) but it’s worth the planning that goes into it.

You can substitute an equivalent weight of cooked chickpeas here if you like, resulting in something closer to classic hummus.

You’ll need:

2 tsp cumin seeds
400g sprouted chickpeas (see instructions below)
2 small cloves garlic
4 tsp tahini
4 tblsp chopped fresh coriander
4 tblsp lemon juice
2 tblsp tamari (or use regular soy sauce)
2 tblsp extra virgin olive oil
salt to taste
cayenne pepper (optional)

You’ll also need:

A food processor and a spice grinder or mortar and pestle.

The Steps:

Toast the cumin seeds in a small frying pan over a medium heat for 3-4 minutes or until fragrant. Grind to a powder using a spice grinder or crush using a mortar and pestle.
Whizz the chickpeas, cumin, garlic, tahini, coriander, lemon juice, tamari and olive oil together in a food processor so that it forms a paste. Taste and add salt and/or additional lemon juice or tamari if it’s to your taste. Sprinkle with a little cayenne pepper if you like and enjoy as a dip with (yes) fries or pitta breads or mix with steamed new potatoes to make a warm potato salad.

The Variations:

Natasha also makes a sprouted hummus with parsley and black olive which is worth trying to recreate – just replace the cumin, coriander and garlic with some flat leaf parsley and black olives.

The Results:

Dip for around 4 people

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

Sprouted Chickpeas

While it does require a bit of advance planning, sprouting chickpeas really couldn’t be simpler: soak dried chickpeas for 2 days, drain, leave to sprout for 2 days, et voilà, my new favourite snack. I could munch on these as is, though they might just as easily get thrown into salads or made into hummus.

The instructions for sprouting as given below are pretty much as found over on the veggie boards forum.

You’ll need:

dried chickpeas (to yield 400g sprouted chickpeas, you will need to start with just under 200g dried chickpeas)

The Steps:

Soak the dried chickpeas for 24 – 48 hours – the longer the soaking time, the easier they should be to digest.
Drain and let the chickpeas sprout for around 48 hours (I just left them sitting in a colander, loosely covered with a piece of muslin). Rinse them with water about 3 times a day.
After about 48 hours, the chickpeas should have developed sprouts around 1-1.5cm in length. Eat the sprouted chickpeas as is, add to salads or make hummus (as above).

The Results:

Each 100g dried chickpeas should yield slightly more than 200g sprouted chickpeas.

Spud Sunday: Of Hogs And Blogs

Daily Spud — Sun, 23 May 2010 22:56:10 +0000

Well, would you mess with this man?

That man is Pat Conway, butchery lecturer at GMIT, and he showed the collected masses of Irish food bloggers a thing or two about butchering pork last Thursday.

Hang on there just a minute says you. Masses of Irish food bloggers?

To be fair, even I didn’t know we were so many. But last week’s Irish Food Blogger event, instigated by Donal Skehan and sponsored by Bord Bia, saw a whole bevy of bloggers emerge from behind the internet curtain and take physical shape. They came to Dublin, they saw and heard much about food and food styling, and they got swag.

Clockwise, from top left:
Lorraine Fitzmaurice on things veggie, Maire Dufficy on pork, Erica Ryan on food styling

While there was a definite emphasis on things porcine, with Bord Bia outlining their quality assurance scheme for pork and Maire Dufficy showing what to do with assorted porky cuts, Lorraine Fitzmaurice from Blazing Salads stayed pig-free with a demo that included miso pesto and spelt bread. In an attempt to distract us while lunch was being prepared, Damien Mulley talked blog marketing while Eoin Purcell did a little after-lunch blog-to-book talk. Afterwards, food stylist Erica Ryan and photographer Jocasta Clarke shared some of the secrets behind getting food to look good on camera (several of which involve glycerine, that’s all I’m sayin’).

And then there were the bloggers.

While I didn’t get to meet even half of the folks there, it was lovely to catch up with Bibliocook, I Can Has Cook, An American In Ireland, Nine Bean Row and the CheapEats folks, and to meet Smorgasblog, I Married An Irish Farmer, Dinner du Jour, Adventures in Veg, Mangoes With Lime and Supper Satisfaction among others.

And I am happy to report that my swag, which included cheese and chutney from Sheridan’s, herbs from Living Flavour, smoked trout from Goatsbridge, Good4U sprouts and seeds, and very cute homemade biscuits from Lilly Higgins, all managed to survive the post-event cider and sushi which may have delayed my return home just ever so slightly.

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

Smoked Trout Dip

It’s just as well I made it all the way home with swag intact, otherwise I might have missed the experience that is smoked trout from Goatsbridge. To tell you the truth, the trout is so lovely that it hardly needs any accompaniment, apart, perhaps, from a squeeze of lemon juice and a twist of black pepper. I really haven’t done too much more to it than that here.

I did eat this as a dip with the oven chips below, but stir in some steamed new potatoes and mayonnaise and I’ll warrant that you have yourself a potato salad.

You’ll need:

100g smoked trout fillet, flaked and checked for small bones
2 tsp lemon juice
6 tblsp natural yoghurt
2 tblsp chopped chives
1 tsp capers (optional)
10-15 drops tabasco sauce or to taste
freshly ground black pepper
pinch of salt

You’ll also need:

A blender or food processor to mix the ingredients – if you don’t have one, you can mix by hand.

The Steps:

In a blender or food processor, add the trout, lemon juice, yoghurt, chives and capers (if using) and blend to mix. Alternatively, mash everything together well with a fork.
Add tabasco, black pepper and salt to taste.

The Variations:

You could certainly try this using sour cream or mayonnaise instead of yoghurt and/or dill instead of chives.

The Results:

Dip for 2-3.

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

Oven Chips

Well, now, seeing as next Wednesday, the 26th of May, has been declared National Fish and Chips Day by the Irish Traditional Italian Chippers Association, I felt a distinct urge to make chips to go with my smokey trout dip (it’s fish ‘n’ chips, Jim, but not as we know it!).

I based today’s chips on a method described in Cook’s Illustrated and which first came to my attention when Domini Kemp wrote about it in The Irish Times. It includes soaking the chips in hot water for 10 minutes before cooking. The idea is to remove excess sugars from the cut surfaces, which should reduce over-browning and development of a tough crust. The water should also make the interior of the chips less mealy. I will say that, in a straight comparison of chips that had been soaked and chips that hadn’t, the ones that had been soaked did come out better crust-wise.

And for those of you curious about the history of Italian chipper in Ireland, you could do worse than head over here.

You’ll need:

600g floury potatoes, about 3 medium-sized specimens
approx 3 tblsp olive oil
your choice of herbs / spices

You’ll also need:

One large heavy duty baking tray or shallow roasting tin, or use 2 smaller tins (I used a couple of 20cm x 30cm tins) – a heavy duty tin helps with even browning.

The Steps:

Preheat your oven to 220C. Cooks Illustrated recommends placing your shelf close to the bottom of the oven.
Scrub your potatoes and cut into roughly even-sized wedges, about 1cm thick.
Soak the potatoes in hot tap water for 10 minutes, then drain, lay out on some kitchen paper and pat very dry using additional kitchen paper.
Pour the oil onto your baking tray(s) and place in the oven to heat for 3-4 minutes. Then remove the tray(s), pour the hot oil over the potatoes and toss, adding any other spices or seasonings you wish.
Place the oiled potatoes onto the baking tray(s) in a single layer and cover with foil.
Place into the oven for 5 minutes, then remove the foil and return to the oven for 10-15 minutes or until they have started to brown in spots on the bottom. Turn the chips over using a tongs and return to the oven for another 5-15 minutes or until nicely browned.

The Variations:

When tossing the chips in the oil, add some crushed garlic and rosemary or some smoked paprika (or, really, any other number of herbs or spices).

The Results:

Should serve 2, although I will neither confirm nor deny that I ate this amount in one sitting.

Spud Sunday: Potato Dipping

Daily Spud — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 17:00:19 +0000

My garden is full of surprises.

One day last month, when I was moved to do a bit of tidying up outside, I found this:

That's one funny lookin' Christmas tree...

Having long ago resigned myself to the fact that the romanesco cauliflower I had planted earlier this year had come to naught, there it was, a single specimen, presenting its wonderfully fractal head for inspection. At times like these, you really have to hand it to Mother Nature.

I was as pleased as punch with my discovery, but, very quickly, a dilemma ensued: how to do justice to this prince of brassicas? A vegetable that’s somewhere between cauliflower and broccoli, with a faintly nutty taste and good raw or cooked.

It seemed to me that, in fact, I should do as little as possible. The romanesco was harvested, split into individual spiky florets and presented for consumption with a creamy, nutty, garlicky and potato-y dip. Justice was done.

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

Skordalia – a Greek Potato and Almond Dip

This recipe comes to me by way of the Reluctant Gourmet and his e-book of Great Potato Recipes. I am, of course, always interested when books of potato recipes come my way (and yes, I own several) and this e-book, with over 100 recipes and some solid spudly advice, more than holds its own in their company.

Though there were many recipes in the book that I wanted to try, the one that really caught my eye was this one for Skordalia, a Greek dip involving garlic, potatoes and almonds.

Yes, a dip with potatoes. It’s not such an outrageous idea for a spud.

I had actually seen a different version of the same dish recently over at Noble Pig, so it seemed like it was high time to give it a try. I was very glad I did. Nutty, garlicky and very more-ish. It complemented the romanesco very nicely, though you could, of course, dip other crisp veggies or pita bread into it too. I daresay you could spread some of this onto a piece of crusty bread and complete the sandwich with some leftover Christmas meats if you felt so inclined. Whip up a bowl or two if you’re doing some yuletide entertaining, you’ll not regret it.

I have adapted the recipe slightly, by giving the almonds a light toasting. I also didn’t have marcona almonds, which the recipe suggests, but I didn’t let that put me off.

You’ll need:

1 small head of garlic
olive oil for roasting the garlic
100g almonds
450g potatoes, preferably a floury variety
6 tblsp extra virgin olive oil
100g natural yoghurt (or add 50g more for a softer consistency)
3 tblsp lemon juice
1 tsp coarse salt or to taste
freshly ground black pepper to taste

You’ll also need:

A potato ricer is handy for mashing the potatoes, as is a spice grinder or food processor for grinding the almonds and blending the oil and garlic.

The Steps:

Preheat your oven to 200C.
Remove the outer layer of papery skin from the garlic and slice off the top of the head, just to expose the cloves. Wrap the garlic in foil and pour about a tblsp of olive oil over the exposed clove. Roast for around 35 minutes or until the cloves are completely soft and, meanwhile prepare the almonds and potatoes.
Spread the almonds on a baking tray and place in your hot oven for around 5 minutes or so. Remove, allow to cool a little and grind finely using a spice grinder or food processor.
Peel your potatoes and cut into roughly even-sized slices, around 1-2cm thick. Rinse them under cold water.
Bring about 1l of water to the boil in a saucepan, add about 1 tsp salt and the potato slices. Bring back to the boil and reduce to a simmer. Simmer gently, covered, for around 15-20 minutes or until just fork-tender. Alternatively, you can steam the potatoes until they reach the same stage.
When the potatoes are done, drain well and return them to the saucepan. Then either let them sit, covered by a tea-towel, for about 5 minutes or place the pan over a low heat and stir the potatoes gently for a minute or so while they dry out.
Put the dried and still-warm potatoes through a potato ricer and into a large bowl, or mash gently in the bowl using a masher.
Blend together the olive oil and roasted garlic cloves, add to the potatoes and mix to combine.
Then add the yoghurt, lemon juice, ground toasted almonds, with coarse salt and black pepper to taste. Add more yoghurt if you want a softer consistency. Serve warm or at room temperature with pita bread or fresh, crispy veggies (and romanesco if you’ve got it).

The Variations:

This works just as well with almonds that are simply blanched and not toasted.

The Results:

Dip for 6-8 festive guests

Fancy A Dip?

Daily Spud — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 22:22:51 +0000

Sometimes I think that cloning is the only way forward.

I’d go all out and order a job lot of 12 clones of myself, which might be just enough to go around. I would place one of those clones exclusively on blog-reading duty, so that I could properly keep up with all of the other blogs that I (attempt to) read. What bliss that would be.

Now before I go any further, I know that the astute among you will point out that your average spud already develops by cloning, in which case I want to know where the other 11 daily spuds have got to. A little phone call every now and then wouldn’t hurt, would it?

Meanwhile it’s just me, myself and I, snatching a few hours here and there in an attempt to take in what the populace of blogland is up to. What’s interesting, what’s new or old-but-new-to-me, what’s entertaining, what’s challenging, what’s something that I must try someday, what’s something that I’d simply never have thought of and what’s something that requires that I drop everything and go make it. I had one of those drop-everything moments this weekend when I read The Duo Dishes post about Muhammara. Er, moo who?

Drop everything and take a dip

Muhammara is a middle eastern dip involving roasted red peppers. I can’t put my finger on quite what it was that provoked such an immediate reaction, leading me to ~~leave the building~~ get dressed properly and then leave the building in search of red peppers. Perhaps it was a minor rebellion against the vegetables in the garden – I mean, I love ya lads but I also need a little variety in my diet.

So it was that peppers were acquired and roasted, a taster batch of the dip made and eaten almost as quickly. I had been right to drop everything. I had a new favourite thing to make.

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

Muhammara

This is ever so slightly adapted from The Duo Dishes, who, in turn, adapted it from Ellie Krieger. Recipes are like that.

A word about pomegranate molasses, which is basically concentrated pomegranate juice. It’s syrupy and tangy and makes a lovely addition to this dip (in fact, you might like to add more than specified) but don’t let the fact that you don’t have any put you off. You could try adding some pomegranate juice instead or try either tamarind paste or amchoor (dried mango powder) which seem to me to have a similar tang. Or you can just leave it out. It’ll still be tasty.

As for the roasted red peppers, you can, of course, buy a jar of same and be done with it. On the other hand, you can go all out and roast your own (see below) which will be even nicer.

On the garlic front, I tend to steer clear of using a lot of raw garlic, so I used less than the Duo (and also tried substituting roasted garlic, which is a lot mellower). Feel free to increase the garlic content if that’s your thing.

You’ll need:

500g roasted peppers (see below)
75g walnuts
1 clove raw garlic or 6 cloves roasted garlic (see below)
3 tblsp breadcrumbs
1 tsp pomegranate molasses
zest and juice of 1 lemon
0.25 tsp cayenne pepper
0.25 tsp cinnamon
0.5 tsp cumin
2 tblsp olive oil
coarse salt to taste

The Steps:

Put the walnuts and raw garlic, if using, in a food processor and blend until they resemble fine crumbs.
Add the roasted peppers, roasted garlic (if using) and breadcrumbs and blend until the mixture forms a paste.
Add the cayenne, cinnamon, cumin, lemon zest and juice and pomegranate molasses and blend until incorporated.
Drizzle in the olive oil until smooth, adding more if necessary to reach a consistency you like.
Add coarse salt to taste.
Grab some pita breads and eat.

The Variations:

The first time I made this, I actually used a bit less than half the amount of roasted peppers specified (only because I roasted the peppers myself and forgot to account for the fact that they lose a lot of weight through roasting). However I liked that version a lot – it’s less overtly peppery and still very tasty.

The Results:

Chances are that this will make less than you’ll want to eat.

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

Roasted Red Peppers

There is endless instruction to be had on the internet about how to roast peppers and you’ll find a number of different schools of thought. Some tell you to hold the peppers directly over an open flame (on your gas hob or other flame throwing device), charring the pepper very well on all sides. Some say to char the peppers under your grill element / broiler. Others just roast them in the oven and still others use variations involving a combination of the above. Now, I haven’t spent ages trying out all the different methods but let me just say that the oven method works for me. Not least because I do not have a gas hob, so access to an open flame presents certain logistical difficulties. It’s also easier to use the oven if you’ve got lots of peppers to roast.

You’ll need:

As many peppers as you want to roast

The Steps:

Preheat your oven to 180C
Leave your peppers whole and place them in the oven on one or more baking sheets (which you can line with foil if you want to avoid some mess later).
Roast the peppers for around 45 minutes or until they start to blister and blacken in parts, turning them over occasionally.
Remove from the oven and either place the peppers into a bowl and cover with cling film or into a plastic bag and seal. You want to leave them like that for at least 15 or 20 minutes, until they have cooled enough to handle and the trapped steam will have helped to loosen the skins.
Now drain the peppers and slice them open, scraping out the seeds and slipping the skin off. This part is sticky and messy, but the results are worth it.

The Results:

If you’re aiming to end up with a certain weight of roasted peppers, you’ll need to start with slightly more than double that weight of raw peppers. So, to end up with 500g of roast peppers, you’d need to start with around 1.1kg of raw peppers

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

Roasted Garlic

You’ll need:

As many heads of garlic as you want to roast
Olive oil

You’ll also need:

Aluminum foil

The Steps:

Preheat your oven to 180C
Remove the outer papery bits of the garlic skin and slice off the top of each head so that the tops of the cloves are exposed.
Wrap each head in a piece of foil, pouring a little olive oil over the garlic before closing the foil over.
Place in the oven until the cloves are soft – 30-40 minutes or more, depending on your oven. The cloves should slip out easily from their skins when done.
Add to dips or try adding a few roasted cloves next time you’re mashing spuds.

The Results:

As much roasted garlic as you require for your dining pleasure.

Mushy Chickpeas

Daily Spud — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 00:10:19 +0000

The pressure cooker was pressed into action today for the first time since its ordeal the other week, reverting to what it does best, getting pulses cooked in a vaguely practical amount of time.

That was always the trouble with dried pulses – the chickpeas, the kidney beans, the black beans, the butter beans et al. – cooking with them was anything but impulsive (unless, of course, you bought the tinned variety, which was always an option). Dried pulses, however, always involved a fair amount of advance planning: overnight soakage in water, then (in the case of chickpeas), 2 hours worth of simmering to get something suitably tenderised. The pressure cooker, along with the quick-soak method, revolutionised all of that.

With quick-soaking, the pulses are boiled rapidly for 2-3 minutes, then taken off the heat and left to soak in the hot liquid for at least 1 hour. Thereafter, pressure-cooking takes only minutes (20 of them, in the case of chickpeas), once things have built up the appropriate head of steam. I’m an ardent fan of the approach, given that my cooking over the years has involved an awful lot of pulses.

If, however, you should happen to put chickpeas or other pulses under pressure for significantly longer than the recommended time, well, they’ll get quite mushy indeed (and not in the emotional sense!). This is precisely what happened today when the resident sis decided to have a go at the chickpeas and got distracted somewhere in that critical pressure period. In the end, it didn’t really matter, though, as the chickpeas in question were destined (as they often are around here) for hummus, so they were going to get quite mushy anyway…

Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

Hummus

This is my own variation on classic hummus, which uses sesame seeds directly instead of the usual tahini (which is really just a roasted sesame paste). It also calls for less in the way of raw garlic than is typical, but add more if that’s to your taste.

You only need:

250g dried chickpeas (abt 600g cooked weight)
1 small clove garlic
1.5-2 tblsps sesame seeds
3 tblsps lemon juice (or to taste)
1 tsp salt (or to taste)

The Steps:

If using dried chickpeas, soak and cook using whatever method suits the time and equipment you have available. Reserve the cooking liquid. If using tinned chickpeas, just drain and rinse.
Toast the sesame seeds in a dry frying pan for about 4-5 minutes ’til they’ve turned a shade browner, then grind using a coffee or spice grinder.
In a food processor, first add the garlic and give it a quick whizz to chop it.
Add the cooked chickpeas, ground sesame seeds, the salt, lemon juice and (if you have it) a little of the reserved chickpea cooking liquid (or water if not). Blend to mix.
Have a taste and see how you like it. You may like more lemon juice and/or salt. If so, add small amounts at a time, reblend and taste.
If the mixture is too thick for your liking, add more chickpea cooking liquid or water.
If you want to be traditional about it, you can garnish the hummus with some olive oil and a sprinkle of paprika. Or you can just eat it as is with whatever it is you like to dip into it, be it pitta bread, carrots, broccoli, celery etc.

The Portions:

This is a big batch, enough for 6-ish as a lunch along with your choice of dipping bread and veg. Course, it’ll go further if you’re having other dips as well. I usually make batches this size or bigger and then freeze some in small, lunch-sized portions.