I first tried it while in college. One of my more health-conscious friends had it to snack on, or for when meals at the caf just weren't up to par. At first I wasn't quite sure about it, and my room mate agreed. I don't remember what we even tried it on, crackers of some sort maybe? However, later that evening, we found ourselves returning for another try. And thus it began. We soon bought our own container of roasted red bell pepper hummus at Wal-Mart to keep in our mini fridge, sneaking potato bread from the caf to eat it with.
When I was home for the summer between that freshman and sophomore year, I remember telling my mom about my newfound love for hummus and asking her to buy some for them to try. She wasn't too keen on the idea and suggested I try making it myself. So I found a recipe and whipped it up. Excitedly pairing it with Wheat Thins and carrots at suppertime and eager for my parents to try and love it as well.
Well. To put it lightly -- it was awful. I'd added waayyyyy to much garlic powder and it wasn't very creamy. Just thick and lumpy and spicy, garlic-spicy.
Disappointed, I decided I'd have to find a recipe that was a little lighter on the garlic and a little more reliable before trying to re-introduce my parents to hummus.
Back at college, another friend was bragging up her mom's hummus recipe which she made for all family gatherings. I begged for the recipe and got it over text when I was home for Fall Break. Unfortunately, it called for tahini which neither my mom or I had never heard of and couldn't find anywhere among the spices. So I tucked the recipe away and the can of garbonzo beans my mom had bought along with the first recipe, just waiting to miraculously find some tahini somewhere.
Fast-forward 1 1/2ish years and here I am in New York City. I learned that tahini is not a spice but a paste made from sesame seeds. I scoured the aisles of my local grocery store as well as any store I happened to wander into that sold groceries. Surely here in New York, tahini would be a common household good, right? Wrong. I couldn't find it anywhere. I looked by the spices, I checked by the peanut butter and various nut and seed butters, I searched up and down the racks in the exotic or specific-culture food aisles. Nothing. Well lots of other stuff. Sunflower Seed Paste and Duck Sauce and Caribbean Jerk Chicken Rub, but no tahini, no sesame seed paste.
As I mentioned in my last post (Playing Catch-Up), last weekend I went to my friend Mindy's dance gala. Before heading to work, my friend Selina and I wanted to grab some lunch in the area and Mindy suggested Bread and Honey, a deli and market on 8th Avenue. After getting a BLT to go, I was wandering the aisles in search of the beverage aisle and low and behold, in the first aisle I walked down, my eyes fell upon jars of tahini, right there by the peanut butter. Imagine that. Just for kicks, I also checked if they sold rice noodles, something else I haven't been able to find but want to use for homemade Pad Thai -- sure enough, they had those too!
I didn't get either item that day since I was on my way to work, but happened upon another Bread and Honey, closer to my job, the very next day and found that they also stocked tahini (though no rice noodles) that was actually cheaper than at the other location. I'd call that Fate.
I did find it funny: tahini must not be a big seller there -- the girl ringing me up had no idea what it was and didn't quite understand that it went into hummus.
Finally, I could make this infamous hummus! And boy was I excited.
To start, I'd like to say that I don't have a food processor so I used a blender to make mine. If you have a food processor, use it! It's completely possible to make hummus in a blender, but it definitely involved a little extra work of stopping the blender to push the beans down. Many, many... many times. But in the end, this hummus was totally worth it! I also halved the recipe (hence some of the funny measurements) because it's just for me, not a family get-together. Lastly, I didn't have bulbs of garlic so I used garlic powder. The original recipe would have called for 1 1/2 cloves of garlic + 1/8 teaspoon garlic powder.
This recipe is for a basic "original" hummus, but I think you could easily add red peppers, roasted garlic, olives, or whatever additives you like :)
Jan's Original Hummus
1 15 oz can garbonzo beans, drained reserve the juice
1 1/2 Tablespoons lemon juice
1/8 teaspoon + 5 shakes garlic powder
1/4 + 1/8 cup tahini
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 Tablespoon olive oil
Add all ingredients to a food processor (or in my case, a blender. But, as I said, a food processor would be much easier). Blend the ingredients until smooth and add 1/4 a cup of the reserved bean juice for thinning. Add another 1/8 of a cup until you get the consistency you want.
**Using the blender, I had to add the 1/4 cup bean juice from the start so that it would all blend together and I thought that gave it a good consistency. I also had to stop the blender and push the beans down or stir it up with a spatula multiple times so be prepared for that if using a blender.
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