Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Speedy Roasted Red Pepper Hummus and Cornmeal Chips


Yesterday, inspired by the Shiny Happy Hummus recipe over at Fat-Free Vegan and struck by the notion of an oil-free hummus (which pleased me since I like my hummus thick and chunky anyways) and upon receiving an email recipe from my friend D for a Turbo Hummus that also sounded quite good, I decided to try whipping up something of my own (with some homemade cornmeal chips to dip).

This is the fastest recipe I've made in a while. It was so fast I almost wet myself. But I didn't. But then I almost did again when I got giddy at the fact that I got it all done in the amount of time it took for my laundry to swish its way through the wash-cycle. But then I didn't. And then I stopped for a moment and thought perhaps all the near-accidents might be a result of a bladder-infection and not just excitement and that perhaps I should go see my doctor. But then I didn't. Instead I just went and used the potty.

SPEEDY ROASTED RED-PEPPER HUMMUS INGREDIENTS

1 small can (10.5 oz or so) of chickpeas (drained, liquid reserved)
1 small roasted red pepper
3 cloves of roasted garlic
1 t. natural peanut butter
Dried basil
Cayenne pepper
Salt
Pepper

Place chickpeas and garlic into a food processor. Pulse until it's a bit too dry and trying to escape the blades. Toss in your peanut butter and gradually add half of your reserved chickpea liquid. Continue to pulse until creamy. Add Dried basil, cayenne pepper, salt, and pepper to taste. Slice up your red pepper and add about half to the mix. Pulse until it's blended well enough (but with a few tiny chunks still floating around). Add to taste (I only added about 1/2 the red pepper. Voila. Oil-free hummus.

While my cats wrestled inside my heater-box, I whipped up the cornmeal chips...

Cornmeal Chips Recipe: HERE (by the way, this recipe only yields about 20 of these chips, despite alleging it makes 30)

Apparently this was an aphasia-recipe for me, because I kept f-ing everything up: I grabbed the wrong measuring cup when adding the cornmeal into the water and had to wing it (after trying to quickly do mathematical conversions and figure out how much more needed to be added if the recipe called for 2/3 cup and I had accidentally added 1/2 and if Sue was on a train coming from Phillie that left at 5 pm and Roger was headed from Brooklyn on a train that left at 2pm what time they would meet up and how much cornmeal would they tell me to put in the goddamn rest of the recipe--and then giving up and remembering that I no like math). Then I somehow decided the recipe called for the oven temperature to be at 350 rather than 375 and couldn't quite figure out why they were taking so goddamn long to bake. I only realized this retrospectively.

Anyways, all in all, making everything in both of these recipes took me about 40 minutes. And I think I even managed to do the dishes before the timer went off for my laundry. So this is a nice, simple recipe if you wanna whip up something last minute for visitors, say. The chips did not come out as chiply as I had hoped, but I think this was probably because of my oven-temperature aphasia--they still taste pretty good but some are a bit moist and chewy in the middle. But hey, they're homemade. And the hummus is nice and roasted red peppery and doesn't give you that greasy-slick feeling that oily hummuses do. I still think it needs something more to give it a bit more oomph, but we'll see how it is at lunch today and whether the flavors have mingled and danced and screwed into one big copulative pleasure-overload of flavorfulness last night. Will keep you posted...

UPDATE: Chips have gotten chewy overnight. They are incredibly flavorful, but they have the chewy consistency of jerky. Meh!

VERDICT: Hummus--B, Chips--B

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