hummus once more

recipe and all that:

um, the first time i made some with dried chickpeas (cheaper and i had them at hand) i kept at the googling until i found a recipe. the basic outline of my process is:

wash your chickpeas and pick out the rocks and the damaged ones. then set your chickpeas in water with a tsp and half or so of baking soda i think, and leave it for a few hours, then change the water and leave it over night.
then boil the lot (in fresh water) for an hour or two, change the water and keep boiling until chickpeas are easily mashed between your fingers. while it's boiling, be sure you keep skimming the husks off, which should theoretically float to the surface. don't be worried if they don't, it's not the end of the world, it's just a bit easier for the chopping part if they're removed. you're going to save the water and set it aside.

now comes the chopping bit. you want to basically puree or asclosetopureeingaspossible all of your chickpeas and at least two big cloves of garlic. mix those with salt, tahini, lemon juice, and more garlic to taste. my rule of thumb is to use about 1/3 to 1/2 as much tahini as chickpeas. if you've mixed everything together and you think it's too dry, add a little bit of the water you set aside.

for other flavours, you can always add olive oil, cumin, roasted red pepper, pine nuts, roasted garlic, cilantro, pretty much anything you can think of.