Hummus

Now the very first recipe I want to put up is this Hummus recipe I found at Edible Garden (http://www.cookingandme.com/2009/01/hummus-recipe-quick-healthy-spread.html).
I am a big fan of Middle Eastern food. And hummus is one of my all time favorite dishes.But making them...I was hesitant. Then when I read on the blog mentioned above that it took only 15 minutes to make,I thought, why not?


Now the fact that it took me a lot more than the 15 minutes mentioned was one thing but then I did not have Tahini .So I had to make it from scratch. It is a funny scene trying to look for tahini in a local departmental store in Mumbai . The shop assistant gave me a look as though to say, "You really don't have anything else to make for dinner today?" So I came home and googled to find what exactly tahini was . As it turns out ,it is a paste of sesame seeds plain and simple( Yeah...all of you know that ) So back to the store and back home with the sesame (Til seeds).
For 1/2 cup of Tahini ,I needed a cup of sesame seeds roasted in the oven, cooled and made to paste with 1/3 cup of olive oil.The grinding bit was time consuming.
The rest of the recipe I followed with a little changes to the amount of ingredients used. I used the juice of two small lemons, 1tsp of garlic crushed and 1tsp of cumin powder and lots and lots of olive oil.But actually you have to keep tasting the stuff all the while making it and add the ingredients as per personal preferences. And the end product was simply divine.Thank you Nags.

Another thing...1 cup of chick pea can give you about 3-4 large cups of hummus.I have left overs , lots of it .

Ever drooled over a picture on a food blog..searched high and low for the right ingredients,made time specially for preparing it with sweet thoughts of how your loved ones are going to absolutely flip when they have it and how you would bask in all their compliments ...And when finally the dish was done ,You cried..No ,not tears of joy just plain old tears showing how foolish you were to go by those pretty pictures and sugar-coated words.Yes that's when I decided to start this blog to try and test if these fancy recipes do produce those picture perfect results.Lets see how this works out.