Saturday, April 09, 2011

Hummus Variant

Tonight for dinner I made hummus, and it only took me about an hour. I took my favorite hummus recipe, replaced the slowest cooking beans (chickpeas) with the quickest (black-eyed peas), and also threw in some leeks, because I've always wanted to put leeks in hummus. The results were pretty good. Nobody who ate it would bat an eye, but once you know it's not made with chickpeas, you'll notice the slight vegetal flavor of the peas. Or maybe that was just the leeks. Either way, I liked it.

  • 1 cup black-eyed peas
  • 1 large leek, cleaned and chopped
  • 1/2 cup tahini
  • juice of 1 1/2 lemons, or more
  • 3 cloves garlic
  • olive oil, salt

Cook the black-eyed peas in water to cover with about 1/2 tsp. of salt. You want to get them completely tender. Mine took about 45 minutes, but beans vary. While they cook, sauté the leeks in oil slowly with a bit of salt, stirring occasionally, until they've browned a bit. When the back-eyed peas are almost done, add the leeks to the pot with them.

Leeks and black-eyed peas cooking. Despite the picture, cover the pot of black-eyed peas.

In a food processor (or with an immersion blender, which is what I used), puree the garlic with the lemon juice, tahini, and 1/4 cup of water (use extra water from the beans if there's any). Add the black-eyed peas and the leeks and puree some more. Add olive oil to taste (I like about 1 tbs.), and puree some more. Add salt and more lemon juice if necessary.

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