DIY Hummus

I absolutely love hummus, even though I can only have a little bit before I react. However, I know that many folks may not be able to enjoy store-bought hummus due to issues with sesame or garlic, and so I wanted to put here a couple quick recipe 'bases' that you can use to enjoy some hummus for yourself!

Hummus (most basic recipe)

ingredients:

Dried chickpeas
olive oil
salt
lemon juice (or another sour liquid or semi-liquid)
(optional) any spices or seasonings of choice (chili powders and cumin are popular)
(optional) any aromatics (roasted peppers, roasted chiles, and/or garlic are popular and tasty)
(optional) tahini or other seed/nut based 'butter'

Directions:

1. Soak the chickpeas in water, overnight at minimum.  If you want a kind of different flavor, you can soak the chickpeas for a day or two and change out the water a couple times; they will start to ferment and develop a kind of pseudo-cheesy scent that can be pleasant with certain seasonings.
2. Decide if you want 'cooked' hummus or 'raw' hummus.  Either one will be fine, but the taste and texture of cooked is a bit less strong in taste and smoother in texture.  If you choose 'raw' hummus, a 12 hour soaking time total, at minimum, is helpful. 
3. For cooked hummus - drain and rinse the chickpeas, and cook in boiling water (not salt) for a few hours, until very soft.
4. For raw hummus - drain and rinse the chickpeas.
5. Put the chickpeas, salt, and any potential spices or aromatics (or tahini/seed butters) into a food processor (or large mortar and pestle, if you only have that) and blend/mash until chunky-smooth.  Then add in lemon juice and blend a little more. Then, while blending/mashing, slowly add in olive oil in a steady stream until the hummus is the desired texture.  Done!

Notes:

1. Why does this have no ingredient quantities?  Mostly because it's quite varied, how much you need, depending on what is added, if chickpeas are cooked, etc...  And how much or little is added in terms of spices and aromatics is highly dependent on taste.

2. Isn't it weird without tahini?  Nope.  Making hummus without tahini was actually a technique I got from an acquaintance from the Middle East. He mentioned that where he lived, tahini was really cheap, but olive oil less so, so using ONLY olive oil and no tahini became a bit of a status symbol.  I don't know how common this practice is, but it works quite well, even if tahini does make the hummus a bit smoother.

3. Is it safe to eat raw chickpeas?  Yeah, no problem for most folks. If you have any digestive issues, though, especially with any kind of raw foods or beans, however, you probably want to go for the cooked chickpeas rather than raw.

4. I can't use lemon juice; what can I use for a sour taste? This one is a bit tricky.  I have tried vinegar when I couldn't tolerate lemon and while it is 'okay,' it does have a distinct taste that is not necessarily a good match for chickpeas.  I have considered taking plain yogurt and draining it for a few hours, and using the liquid as a good souring agent. Haven't tried this yet, but I've used that as a lemon replacement before and it sometimes works.

Day 3 - Avocado Pesto

Pinterest Day 3 - Avocado Pesto

The Pinterest recipe I looked at today is Creamy Paleo Avocado Pesto at Stupid Easy Paleo

Lamb meatballs with dairy free mint sauce

My chest freezer lost power and I didn't find out for 4 days. Thankfully, the food was still cold, but it had all thawed, so I've been frantically cooking like a madwoman.  I had one pound of lamb, which I never eat but know goes well with mint, and after seeing that some recipes also include ginger, I came up with the following lamb meatball recipe.

It turned out rather nice, honestly. Better than I thought it was. However, my amounts are very slap dash in this one - I was just using what I had, and making estimates about how much I used, after the fact. I ate them so fast I forgot to take a picture, LOL.

Spicy Eggplant - attempt I

I really miss a wonderful Thai dish I used to have, some spicy eggplant that was simply amazing.

I've been fiddling with various methods of recreating a flavor that might be comparable, or at least comparable based on what I remember, and yesterday I got closer than I ever had before.

It was fairly simple. I stir-fried sliced japanese eggplant, and then cooked it with this sauce:

Fake Spicy Thai Sauce (Work-in-Progress):
Apple juice (homemade, so I don't know if the taste changes)
roasted eggplant, peeled and blended up with a little of the apple juice
crushed tepin chiles
sea salt
a little fresh lemon juice

This was spicy, sweet, and a little sour. Not quite right, yet. There's something missing. But it was much closer than I've managed before. I need something for that umami taste, and the roasted eggplant was the best so far, as I can't use mushroom, soy sauce, or coconut aminos. I'm thinking perhaps I could add some roasted tomato, too, just a little bit, and see how that goes, next time. :-)

Another recipe yoinked from my buffalo blog.

Roasted Bell-Pepper Sauce

Simple sauce, relatively cheap, and easy to make. Also involves food items that are frequently in season at the same time, so that’s a plus!  This sauce is GF, CF…a lot of F’s, really. It’s not nightshade free, however, and a lot of sulfite sensitive folks can't tolerate garlic, so leave that out if it's a problem. Still tastes great!

Beet Hummus

Buffalo recipe!
I'm shifting around some of my blogs a bit, so that I can keep all my recipes here. As a result, I'm moving the recipes I have from my other buffalo blog over.


Beet Hummus from 9/20/11 (no, really, take a look)

Artichoke Dipping Sauce

I was lucky enough to have a friend donate some artichokes from her garden to my table the recently, and was trying to figure out what in the world I had that could go with it.

No mayo dips, no vinegar, what was I going to use? Yup, lemons it is

Asparagus Pesto

WOO HOO, CAMERA SUCCESS!!
Time: 10 min
(5 min. prep/ 5 min cook)

Homemade Nut butters

Time: 15 min. total

Ingredients
nuts (I've tried this with pecans and peanuts. Check nut processing if you have peanut allergy concerns)
(optional, for pecans only) Coconut oil, check processing for allergen concerns
salt to taste

Equipment
A food processor, grain/nut grinder, or lots more time and a big mortar and pestle

Directions
1. Get some nuts, add a little salt to taste, and grind those puppies up in the food processor or whatever you've got, until they are mash. Ta-da - Nut butter! My food processor can only handle a small amount of nuts at a time, much less than other, less binding foods, so you may want to check with your processor recommendations. Also, blenders typically don't do too great with this (although I understand a Vitamix does all right).

2. If you are making peanut butter, you need to use roasted or steamed peanuts for it (tastes rather nasty with raw peanuts, IMO). I hear that spanish peanuts do fairly well for this, as they have a high oil content. The most commonly used peanut for commercial peanutbutter is something called the florunner, but as I have yet to see something with that name for sale, I'm thinking the spanish peanut is a better bet. I just used a regular ole peanut which I shelled myself, and it did all right. I added a couple pinches of salt. It was a bit drier than the peanutbutter I'm used to, but we didn't really care.

3. If you are making pecan butter, my attempts came up with a fairly dry nut butter. It never gets that creamy for me. In fact, in the processor, it just made fluffy little cous-cous-like balls of mashed pecan. I had to mush it myself to make it come together. However, when I didn't add salt to the pecan butter, I was able to add some coconut oil after it was scooped out of the processor, and that added both a nice texture and a pleasant scent, too.

4. Serve this as a dip for fruit or veggies, like apples or celery.

Feeds: Completely dependent on how many nuts you use. About 1/3 pound of pecans made maybe a pint of nut butter. Didn't measure the peanuts though, sorry!

What worked: Both of these nut butters did well as dips for apples, which is really about all we used them for. Might do well added to some kind of peanutbutter soup, too. Might do better as a thickener for that than standard nut butters

What didn't work: Rather plain, as I added nothing but the nuts, salt, or that coconut oil for pecans. I forgot that I roasted the peanuts for this butter, so I used raw pecans rather than roasted. Wondering if roasted pecans would have a more robust taste...whatever that is, LOL. Both of these nut butters would have to have a much higher oil content, or outside oil added, to work as a good spread for something. A neutral or flavored oil would probably work, but I only had olive and coconut, so I figured coconut was less nasty with nuts.

What would improve it: I'm thinking that a little investigation on some herbs and flavorings might really help this out some. Maybe a maple pecan butter or a cocoa peanut butter might be awesome...if I could have maple or cocoa, sigh. But if you can, you should totally go for it! Also, I'm reading a couple places that the fluffy ball stage comes before the smooth, buttery stage, so perhaps I have not been processing my nuts enough, here. We'll have to mess around for a bit to check on it.

And lastly, I know, I know, coconut oil is not usually a staple for a lot of us, nor is it cheap. But this totally works without that oil, I just shoved it on there because I sometimes add it.

LOW HISTAMINE - For lists that accept nuts, this should be low histamine compliant. However, some lists don't allow nuts, or only allow certain ones, so treat with caution.

Easy Tomato Sauce

Time: 35-90 min. total - greatly dependent on quantity
(15-30 min. prep/ 20-60 min cook)

Cooking tomatoes and fresh herbs for the sauce

Easy Tomato Sauce

Ingredients
Lots and lots of ripe tomatoes, chopped coarsely
sea salt to taste
fresh herbs (I used a handful of italian or greek oregano plus a little marjoram and a sprig of sage, this time. Basil is good too.)

Directions
1. Put the chopped tomatoes and sea salt into a pot and cook at a simmer or low boil. I usually use a low boil.

2. Keep cooking until the skins begin to peel away from the tomatoes a little. The tomatoes will look mushy at this point. Not a big deal if you cook it a bit too long, though. This usually takes me about, oh, 15-25 minutes, maybe? I don't keep track really well, honestly.

3. Turn off the heat and put the tomatoes into a blender to purée them until smooth. Put them back into the pot and continue to simmer. Too high a heat will burn the tomato sauce, but too low and it takes WAY too long for it to thicken up. Kind of a judgement call on the temp, here.

4. Add chopped, fresh herbs to taste. Basil and oregano go well, usually, for a first try. Continue to simmer until the sauce reaches desired thickness and sweetness. The longer it boils, the sweeter it gets. I understand if you want tomato paste, just keep boiling until it's extra-thick (haven't tried that yet, though).

Feeds: How much you make is affected by how many tomatoes you use, obviously. About 8 vine ripened tomatoes plus 3-4 larger heirloom tomatoes made 3-4 pints of sauce by the time it boiled down to the thickness I wanted.

Shauna's Notes:
Inspired by: My friend Nicole, who took pity on my sad lack of cooking skills and showed me how to make a quick, GF tomato sauce.

What worked and didn't work: It's a nice sauce as long as you have enough time to cook it. If you cook it for too short a time, the tomato flavor is less sweet and more of that tart, raw-ish tomato taste, which my son hates. Also, as the cooking time affects the thickness, this can take a while to get it as thick as you may desire. So far, haven't had a bad herb combination, but more is almost always better. My sauce does contain seeds as I don't leave those out.

What would improve it: This is a really basic sauce, which I typically spruce up when I actually use it in a recipe. For the most basic sauce, I don't even add the herbs. I like to make a big batch like this because then I can add whatever type of flavor-style I want, like for Italian dishes or Mexican ones.

Herb combinations:

1. Marjoram, winter savory, and greek oregano
2. Marjoram, winter savory, and rosemary
3.  For Italian spaghetti-style sauce, I usually add chopped zucchini, bell peppers, hot peppers, garlic, sometimes chopped kale or swiss chard, and meat. I've also used chopped carrots, as well.
4.  For Mexican sauces, I often add onion, garlic, mexican sage, greek oregano. I'll frequently add chopped cilantro and sliced avocado on top, after it's done cooking.

NOTES:
3/7/13 - Since first making this, I have had the best success using suggestions from some lovely folks at my farmer's market. Now, instead of regular ripe tomatoes, I get some over-ripe and some under-ripe tomatoes - heirloom ones worked awesome, but mixing them with regular tomatoes is probably more affordable. Then, I cooked them until the tomatoes were mush, then blended them up and then kept cooking.  This made a much sweeter tomatoes sauce, both the over-ripe tomatoes and the longer cooking time. Really quite lovely.