Meatless Monday: Homemade Hummus

I have been wanting to make homemade hummus ever since I realized how much my addiction to Sabra brand hummus was costing me! Today I read a whole bunch of recipes (as is my wont) and gathered the info together and made my own hummus recipe.

I cooked a 1 pound bag of garbanzo beans in my pressure cooker (35 minutes on high pressure, then allowed to come to natural pressure release). I put the beans in the pot with 6 C of water, 1 large carrot (cut into chunks) and 2 large pieces of celery. I also added several very small cloves of garlic. Once the lid was on the cooker and gathering steam I put 5 heads of garlic inside some heavy duty foil and drizzled them with olive oil (regular, not extra virgin or anything) and put the foil packet on a heavy duty baking tray. Then I roasted the heads at 400 degrees for 30 minutes, as I walked out the door for basketball practice tonight I turned the heat down to 200 degrees. When we returned from basketball practice I pulled the garlic out and took the lid off the pressure cooker. My beans looked beeeeeee-yoo-ti-full! I could practically have made soup right then and there. I took 2 C of garbanzos from the pot and put them in my blender. I added 2/3 C of the water they were cooking in to the blender and turned it on. The beans got pretty mushy and then I added about 3 TBs of the tahini (sesame paste). A word on tahini, this was my first time working with it, it is sort of like all natural peanut butter, the oil separates from nut paste. It was very hard to mix the oil back into the ground sesame, so my measurement is not exact by any means. I also added about 2 teaspoons of kosher salt, the juice of half a lemon, 2 cloves of the roasted garlic and 1/4 teaspoon of ground cumin. I started the blender again (after scraping down the sides) and while it was running I added about 2-3 TB of olive oil (regular not extra virgin). I added it slowly, as one would add it to a vinaigrette or for mayonnaise. When the hummus was lovely and fluffy and light I tasted it, you could adjust seasonings at that point. I liked it, and so did my kids.

I served the hummus with warm pita bread, red globe grapes, olives, pickled okra, alouette herbed cheese (for the kids), carrot sticks, brie cheese (for the hubby), goat cheese (for me!) and roasted garlic. The kids dipped their carrot sticks in their herbed cheese. I ate my pita spread with goat cheese and then topped with roasted garlic and alternated it with bites of hummus. It was all delicious. I didn't serve the kids the roasted garlic at first, I kept it on my plate and my husband's plate. Sure enough the oldest child wandered over and inquired, "What's that?" and by the end of dinner was squeezing out her own roasted garlic from individual cloves. *SO PROUD* Of course now we are all going to fight over the roasted garlic, but small price to pay for having another good eater in the family. :)