Did you catch my painfully eloquent reference to Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte? This is what happens when you let
your children major in the humanities; they use their obscenely expensive
education to make arcane jokes on a food blog. I’m a cautionary tale,
people—don’t let your children learn to appreciate a standard of living that
they will never be able to afford.
But to get to the point at hand, this is not, in fact, hummus. Hummus is a purée made from chickpeas (aka garbanzos), tahini, garlic, lemon, and other flavorings. This is something else. It is similar, it is hummus-inspired, but it is not, as the British would say, proper hummus. Like hummus, it can be used as a dip for vegetables, pita chips and the like—although if you spread it on toast, it can be a rather nice breakfast for those who dislike standard breakfast fare (Hi Ellen).
There’s not much to this one, to be honest. You need a food
processor (a blender will work as well), though. I suppose you could pound it
for hours using a mortar and pestle if you wanted to be medieval about it, but
I can’t say that I would recommend that unless you’re a masochist. That said,
if you are a masochist, let your freak flag fly and pound away. I don’t judge.
Here’s the obligatory food blog picture of the ingredients.
Clockwise from upper left, we have olive oil, roasted red peppers, Spanish
smoked paprika, basil, garlic and canned white beans. I forgot to include the
lemon, but presumably you’ll forgive me that minor omission. I didn’t include
salt and pepper either. The whole assembled ingredients photo business is a lie, OK? Let’s just have it all
out in the open.
Now it’s just a matter of blending everything together. I
start by mincing the garlic with a pinch or two of salt. Tear up the basil and
throw that in as well. Obviously, other herbs can be used—I’m quite fond of rosemary,
but use whatever you like or have on hand.
Add some red peppers. These are small, so I’m using four of
them, but you can use fewer if you’ve got larger ones.
Drain and rinse the
white beans, and put them in.
Purée them with the juice of half a lemon, and a couple of
pinches of the smoked paprika. You’ll get a rough purée, rather like this.
How do you smooth out this purée? By adding fat, of course.
Put in a glug of olive oil and purée until smooth, adding
an additional glug if necessary. Taste it for seasoning—it often needs some
salt, and some chili flakes wouldn’t go amiss, if you wanted more of a kick.
Serve it up with veggies, or any of the other accompaniments I mentioned earlier. Bon appetìt,
y’all.
No formal recipe on this one, but here’s a list of
ingredients; all of this is to taste, really.
3 – 4 garlic cloves
6 basil leaves (or rosemary,
3 – 4 roasted red peppers
¼ – ½ tsp smoked paprika
1 can of white beans (cannellini or great northern), drained
and rinsed
juice of ½ lemon
¼ cup of olive oil, plus more as needed
salt and pepper to taste
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