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This is a really simple hummus recipe and is a great base for making various flavored versions.

I have made this hummus many times and I like to use it to make simple healthy sandwiches as well as just dip stuff in it.

This time I made a super delicious hummus and sprouts sandwich. Exciting, huh? Do you want to run out to the store right now and make this?! Well it is no cheesy, buttery, meat filled sandwich, but it is tasty, fresh, and satisfying. I enjoy the various kinds of sandwich sprouts, so that is what I topped my hummus with . I don’t really have a favorite sprout, I will just buy whatever looks the best that day. If they look very wet and/or have an unpleasant odor, I don’t buy them. You can find them in the produce section of your grocery store, usually near the fresh herbs. If you don’t enjoy sprouts, you can top this sandwich with cucumbers, radishes, tomatoes, roasted red peppers, olives, sliced chicken or turkey, etc., or anything else you can think of.

This hummus recipe comes from our good friend Dianna. She gave it to me a while ago, and I have finally gotten around to writing about it. Sometimes I am really lazy.

Dianna’s Easy & Delicious Hummus
by Sara at imafoodblog.com

Ingredients

• 1 15 oz can of garbanzo beans or 2 cups of cooked garbanzo beans, reserve bean liquid
• 2-3 garlic cloves, to taste
• 1/4 cup tahini
• 1-2 lemons, zested & juiced
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cumin
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1/4 cup olive oil

Directions

1. If using dried garbanzos: soak dried beans overnight (8-12 hours) in a bowl of water in the fridge. Then boil the beans in a large pot of water until the beans reach the desired consistency (the desired consistency = soft and edible). Reserve some of the bean cooking liquid for the hummus.
* Note - If I go through the trouble of cooking the dried beans, I make more than I need for this recipe. Then I freeze them in small ziploc bags in 2 cup servings and cover them with the bean cooking liquid. They freeze well and then I can just pull out a bag when I am in the mood for some good hummus or other bean dip. I believe last time I did this I made 2 cups of dried beans and got about 6 cups of cooked beans out of it.
2. If you are using canned beans - drain the beans and reserve the liquid.
3. In a large food processor, add the beans, garlic, tahini, lemon zest, lemon juice, cumin, paprika, salt, and pepper. You may want to start on the lower end of the garlic and lemon juice and then add more if needed to taste. Pulse until the beans are broken up into a thick paste consistency.
4. With the processor running, add the olive oil in a slow steady stream (think pesto). You will most likely also need to add some of the reserved bean liquid (especially if you have used dried beans) or water if you did not keep the bean liquid. Stream in the reserved bean water or regular water until the desired consistency is reached. Allow the mixture to process for at least a minute or two to completely break up the beans. I like my hummus to be very light and silky and smooth - not stiff and thick. To achieve this, I usually add between 1/4 - 1/2 cup of bean water and I make sure that the beans are totally pulverized. If you don’t let the food processor do its thing for long enough, your hummus will be chunkier and a bit grainy. Just think about the consistency of your favorite hummus and try to emulate that.
5. Adjust the salt and pepper and other seasonings to taste.
6. To store - place in a plastic container and then coat the top with some more olive oil (this will keep it moist) and sprinkle some more paprika on top (a bit more flavor and a nice color). Hummus is best eaten at room temperature.

If you like this recipe, you may also like my roasted red pepper hummus.

From this:

To this:

And then to this:

So simple and yummy:

This week it was my turn again to pick something for Craving Ellie in My Belly, and I chose a New York Breakfast.

Like Ellie, I grew up in New York (I may have mentioned that a bazillion times on this blog already), and thus I grew up eating lots of bagels with cream cheese and various types of smoked fish. My favorite being nova lox. I know this is something that people either love or hate, so I apologize to my Craving Ellie girls who fall in the latter category.

However, I was in New York a few weeks ago and every time I go I always ingest tons of lox while I am there and then bring some back with me and freeze it. So I was inspired by my trip up there to pick this recipe since I knew I would be flush with smoked fish.

Before we get to the recipe, let’s talk fish. Lox, nova, nova lox - it’s all the same thing. And what it is is cured and cold smoked salmon. Yum! It is the stuff of dreams (well, my dreams). The name is derived from the German word “lachs” and the Yiddish word “laks", both meaning salmon. Nova can sometimes be confused with smoked salmon, which are indeed two completely different things. Smoked salmon is hot smoked, so it is cooked, which provides a very different final texture and flavor compared to a cold smoked salmon. Cold smoked salmon is technically raw because it never reaches over 90F. You may have also heard of Gravlax, which is a Nordic preparation of salmon. In Gravlax, the salmon is cured with a spice rub usually containing salt, sugar, paprika and dill. It is then weighed down to push out all the moisture and cures for about 3 days. Gravlax is not smoked at all, so it is also a raw application of salmon. I love salmon - raw and cooked - and all of these different preparation are delicious. However, nova remains my favorite.

This sandwich is really simple to make and it does not have many ingredients. So that is why it is important that all the ingredients are top quality, because you will taste everything. I hope everyone who made this was able to find good lox. I prefer to get mine from a deli where they slice it off the fish themselves on site. I try to stay away from the vacuum sealed stuff, but it will do in a pinch. I also tried some lox from Whole Foods once and found it to be horrendous. This is why I usually don’t buy it unless I am in New York, but I am bit of a snob, so just ignore me.

I made my New York Breakfast a bit different than Ellie’s directions.

Here are my changes:

1. I used thinly sliced rye bread instead of pumpernickel.
2. I used full fat chive cream cheese instead of neufchatel cheese. I did this because Nick and I have decided that besides the fact that NY bagels are superior to every other bagel, another reason why our NY bagel sandwiches are always so good is because of the delicious homemade cream cheese you get at some of the bagel shops and delis. So I picked up some quality cream cheese from a NY style bagel store near my office in Maryland. Since I got chive flavored cream cheese (my favorite) I did not add extra chives.
3. I left out the cucumber and tomato.

So my sandwich consisted of well toasted rye bread, cream cheese, thinly sliced red onion, lox, and some more red onion. I hope everyone who made this enjoyed it. I sure did. And this is not the only way I like to eat lox, check out my post about lox, eggs, and onions. Also yum!

Lox:

And yummy cream cheese:

This weeks Craving Ellie in My Belly is Chicken Sate with a Spicy Peanut Dipping Sauce. It was chosen by the hilariously funny Cathy of The Tortefeasor. It can be found at the aforementioned Food Network link or on page 54-55 of The Food You Crave. This is in the appetizer section of the book, but I decided to make it into dinner portions and serve it with some rice.

This recipe starts with marinating the chicken in a mixture of chicken stock, lite coconut milk, soy sauce, shallot, garlic, fish sauce, brown sugar, lime zest, and ginger. I marinated my chicken for about 8 hours instead of the 1 hour Ellie suggests. The chicken was very flavorful on it’s own and my favorite part was the flecks of lime zest that stuck to the chicken from the marinade.

I enjoyed skewering the chicken but I only got about 6 skewers instead of 8. I guess I over stuffed my skewers, but it really did not matter since it was just the two of us. I did only use 1 pound of chicken breast and I felt like it was a generous amount of chicken for dinner. I couldn’t finish it all. However, Nick, who increasingly complains that he is always so hungry finished all of his and the rest of mine.

The peanut sauce was very good, similar to but definitely not the same as the sauce from the lime peanut noodles that we made a few weeks ago. The dipping sauce was made from peanut butter (I used up the rest of my homemade PB ), chicken broth, soy sauce, brown sugar, ginger, lime juice, garlic, chili flakes, red curry paste, and shallot. I think I liked this sauce better, and I was pleased to see that Nick enjoyed it as well. I was worried that this would end up being a pizza night because he is not a big fan of peanut sauces or sauces in general on his chicken. However, to my pleasant surprise he not only tolerated but sincerely liked the sauce. I left out the red pepper flakes because I don’t really like any heat in my food. Though I did think the sauce still had a bit of a kick from the green curry paste (the store was out of red curry paste - but they smell the same to me - very strong and kind of gross).

Instead of tossing the leftover coconut milk I decided to make some rice with it. I combined 1 cup of light coconut milk, 1 cup of water, 1 cup of uncooked basmati rice, 1/4 tsp of grated fresh ginger, and a splash of lime juice. Just cook it up like you would normally cook rice, this took about 15 - 20 minutes. The rice was very creamy and it definitely retained flavor from the coconut milk. Though I could not taste the ginger or lime at all, so if I make this again, I would increase both.

Overall this was a very tasty dinner and I would absolutely make this chicken and the dipping sauce again.

Bruschetta has been around for a long time, like 15th century long time. It originated, of course, somewhere in central Italy. The word bruschetta is derived from the word brucare which is of Roman dialect and means “to roast over the coals". (Thanks Wikipedia). I think a lot of people assume that bruschetta refers to the delicious topping on this Italian snack, but it in fact refers to the grilled bread.

It seems to me that the most traditional type of bruschetta is topped with a raw tomato and basil combination. Since Nick and I both do not like raw tomatoes this is not something that we would normally eat. However, since bruschetta was July’s Recipe to Rival challenge, and it is easy and inexpensive to make, I figured we may as well try this recipe out.

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These are basically fresh baked cheez-it crackers in a straw shape, which is a-ok with me. Crispy, cheesy and buttery. The trifecta of deliciousness.

They would make a great party appetizer, but I had no party to bring them to. I made these for basically no good reason except that I saw them on Smitten Kitchen and really wanted to try them.

And I am sure glad I did because they are awesome, and really easy to make. The dough is softened butter, cheese, flour, cream/milk, salt, and red pepper flakes. Food process it up, roll out the dough and cut in strips. The whole deal takes no more than a half an hour. They bake up quickly too, about 15-20 minutes.

I was worried at first when I was making these because the raw dough was not very tasty, and they had a mildly unpleasant smell when they were baking. I am not sure why, maybe it was just all that sharp cheese and butter cooking together. One would think that would smell like heaven, but not really. However, when they came out of the oven I tried one immediately, and there was nothing to worry about.

You could make all kinds of variations of these cheese straws. I would love to try different cheeses paired with different fresh herbs or dried spices.

Recipe follows…

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We are not really a gazpacho eating household. I think both of us just don’t really care for cold soup. In addition, most gazpacho’s are tomato based and we do not like tomatoes when they are uncooked and so tomatoey.

However, this week’s Craving Ellie in My Belly recipe is a white (or really, green) gazpacho. This is definitely not something that I would have picked out on my own, and to tell the truth I wasn’t too keen on making it. Though I do feel some responsibility to do the Craving Ellie recipe each week, provided that I have the time to do it, so I decided to halve this recipe and try it out.

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Did you know that chickpeas were one of the earliest cultivated vegetables? Like 7500 years ago. That would be 5491 BC. That is a long f’ing time ago.

However, the ladies over at Recipes to Rival told me that this month I would be deep frying chickpeas. Falafel and chickpea fries. Okay, twist my arm.

I generally try to avoid fried foods. I like to save my fried food intake for particular things that I know I love and will be worth the fat and possible belly ache that I get from too much fried stuff. A fried fish sandwich from a stand near Nick’s childhood home in PA, homemade French fries, good tempura, or fresh yeast doughnuts are all evil temptresses to me. I usually give in to them.

I debated baking these falafel and chickpea fries, but decided to just do it up right and deep fry. It had been a while since we deep fried anything anyway.

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I don’t put much stock into the USDA guidelines for cooking meats. I like my steak barely cooked, fish and shell fish completely raw (or close to it), my pork slightly pink on the inside, and even my poultry cooked JUST to the point of safety. The reason? Because it’s delicious that way, plain and simple - and because I trust the producers and my purveyors implicitly. I do not recommend doing so to others, especially those who are already at a greater risk of getting “really” sick, i.e. very young/old, immuno-compromised, or taking medications that mess with digestion, etc. or people who don’t have a personal relationship with a grocer to insure their protein is of the highest quality and produced adhering to the strictest safety standards.

All of that said, this is one of my absolute favorite things to make. If you live outside of a large city, good luck getting the sushi grade (frozen within a certain amount of time to a ridiculously low temperature and held there to inhibit bacterial growth - though technically, this is not regulated by the FDA) tuna. Hell, I can’t even get it regularly here unless I call in advance and have it held for me - EVERYONE BUYS THIS STUFF AS SOON AS IT HITS THE FISH CASE. Why? Because is absolutely exquisite, possibly the best tasting fish ever.

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I think by now hummus is so mainstream that everyone knows how delicious and healthy it can be. That said, not all hummus is created equal. I have had some unbelievable hummus and I have also had some stuff labeled hummus that should be embarrassed by itself.

For a while I was content to eat the hummus that I would buy at Whole Foods, which is actually quite good. Then one day our friend (and occasional food critic on this blog) Dianna was saying how she makes her own hummus all the time because it is so easy and so much better than anything she could buy at the grocery store. She was so right and I so needed to make my own. I went online in search of an authentic hummus recipes and melded a few into one.

I made this roasted red pepper hummus because I had extra peppers in the fridge. I have made this hummus twice now, and it is very tasty. It is definitely not the best hummus I have ever had, but it is pretty damn good. If you don’t like roasted red peppers, just remove them from the recipe and make plain hummus. I will continue to make hummus and tweak recipes until I can rival the hummus of Pita Plus, which is the best hummus I have had in these parts. Those Israeli’s know how to make a mean hummus and lafa bread.

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This is just a quick lunch that I put together for myself on a day off from work, and it turned out delicious. I also think this would be a great hors d’oeurve or appetizer to serve at a party.

I had some flour tortillas leftover in the fridge, so I topped it with some part skim mozzarella, roasted red peppers, and prosciutto, and baked it for a few minutes.

Of course, you can do any combination you want. I think this is a great way to do a bit of fridge/pantry clean out or you can fancy it up for a party.

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