Today is Ash Wednesday, so Catholics throughout the world are fasting and abstaining from meat. I just made a batch of hummus, which we’ll have with pita bread and raw vegetables: carrots, red cabbage, celery, green pepper.
When I make hummus, I usually refer back to one or two cookbooks (such as The New Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen) but I vary the ingredients considerably. It’s basically garlic, chickpeas, lemon juice, and parsley, plus whatever else I want to throw in or have around.
I started on Monday night by soaking a bag of chickpeas in warm water to cover with a few tablespoons of whey added. The whey is optional, but speeds the soak and helps break down the chickpeas a bit. Tuesday night, I drained them and rinsed them and put them in the Crockpot on low heat, overnight, with water and salt. By this morning they were cooked, and I transferred them and their liquid to the refrigerator.
A little while ago I put five peeled cloves of garlic, five trimmed green onions, and about one and a half bunches of parsley (I love parsley; it’s nutritious and turns the hummus a lovely pale green) into my Cuisinart food processor and chopped it very fine. That went into the big mixing bowl. Then in two batches I pureed the drained chickpeas with about three-quarters of a cup, total, of tahini, three-quarters of a cup, total, of lemon juice, a handful of the parsley mixture, and some salt. I poured a few glugs of olive oil into the feed tube while it was going each time. Then I folded it all together into the bowl. I added some black pepper, cumin, and cayenne as well.
Now I have to ask: does tasting a dish for purposes of correcting the seasoning count as impermissible between-meal snacking on a fast day? How about licking the spoon?
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