Red Pepper Hummus
February 26, 2013 § 4 Comments
We haven’t bought a can of beans in, oh gosh…I’d say six months. This weekend we used our last stray can of black beans for a chili—and I remember moving to our new house with it and packing it away on an upper kitchen shelf. Cooking up dried beans in a pressure cooker is super easy and super cheap, and here’s the bonus: You get several cups of flavorful bean broth to add to whatever dish needs a little tasty liquid. (See how easy it is here.)
And if we’re cooking up our own beans, we might as well make our own favorite bean-based spread, right? I’m speaking of hummus, of course, made with those funny looking little chickpeas (aka garbanzo beans). I’ve written about hummus here before, but after making several batches of the stuff, I was left disappointed. Too thick. I wanted the creaminess you’d find in the off-the-shelf brands.
Jennifer found the solution—or very nearly—with a recipe from The New Moosewood Cookbook. Not completely creamy as we had hoped, she adjusted and tasted and made batch after batch until finally, she made the perfect consistency. The secret? Adding in some of that aforementioned bean broth and reducing the amount of tahini. Oh, and adding in a roasted red pepper.
Red Pepper Hummus (adapted from The New Moosewood Cookbook)
red pepper hummus
- 2-3 cloves garlic, sliced
- large handful parsley
- 2 scallions, chopped into 1-in. pieces
- 3 cups cooked chickpeas (nearly a 1-lb. bag of dry beans cooked, reserve cooking liquid)
- 4 tbs. tahini
- Juice of one lemon juice (or more, depending on said lemon’s juiciness)
- 3/4-1 tsp. salt
- 1/2 tsp. cumin
- 1/4 – 1/2 sumac to taste (optional if you can find it at your local Middle Eastern grocer)
- 1/4 tsp. paprika
- 1 red pepper, roasted at 425F for 30 min., cooled and skin removed, and cut into strips
1. In a food processor combine the garlic, parsley and scallions, and whir up into a mince.
2. Add chickpeas, tahini, lemon and salt. Puree into a paste.
3. Add the cumin, sumac and paprika as you add some of that reserved bean cooking liquid—try about 1/4 cup—and process. Add more liquid by the tablespoon until you find the consistency right for you. Careful with the sumac—you may like just a tad, so taste before adding any more than a 1/4 tsp.
4. Add the red pepper at the very end and pulse the food processor until it breaks down the red pepper. We’re not looking for a completely pureeing of the pepper. We just want it broken down into bits.
It’s great on a chip, on this awesome cracker we made last week, or—my favorite use—schmeared on a Roasted Eggplant on Whole Wheat Sandwich.
Pressure Cooker Basics
March 12, 2012 § 15 Comments
And boy do I mean basics. I’m not a pressure-cooker expert—far from it. But I’m writing this because:
- My friend Katherine hinted that she’s always been a little uneasy using pressure cookers, and perhaps a Dainty tutorial was called for (um, Katherine, you’re a DOCTOR, and likely have had your hands elbow-deep IN people or delivered babies – my lord, if you can do that …)
- Pressure cookers are totally useful kitchen tools—they can cook some long-cooking bean or stew or hunk of meat in much less time. Who doesn’t need to shave some time off the cooking process without totally bailing and ordering take-out? If I can help spread pressure-cooker love to just one more person, then my mission is done (well, not done but I’d certainly feel good about it).
- I just pressure-cooked a pot of chickpeas, and since I need something to post about, why not this?
Again, I am sooo noooot a pressure-cooker expert. These are just some quick tips and bare-minimum suggestions from someone who was once afraid of the device and is now totally cool with its use.
Completely forget the stories your Mom or Grandma told you each summer … the story about their pressure cookers explosively losing their lids as their batch of homemade tomato sauce was being sealed and canned for winter. Sauce everywhere, they said, and you didn’t believe a word until Mom redid her kitchen and they moved the stove and found the tomato splatter evidence. THAT’S. NOT. GOING. TO. HAPPEN. Not nowadays. Not with a) today’s technology and b) today’s litigious society. A lid explodes, a child gets hurt … that can’t happen.
Spend the money. Buy a good, reputable brand. Jennifer bought a Kuhn-Rikon. It’s Swiss. And you know those Swiss.
Kuhn-Rikon pressure cooker
Read the manual. Seriously, do it.
Get a specialty cookbook with pressure-cooker recipes. We have Pressure Perfect by Lorna Sass. It’s very useful.
The gasket is important. It fits in the inner lip of the lid and helps create a seal within which the air pressure can increase. A damaged gasket? A missing gasket? No seal.
Make a match. Most lids fit on the pressure cooker pot in a certain way and require a certain action. Ours requires that the arrow on the lid match with the arrow on the pot handle, and with those matched up, you then twist and lid into a LOCKED position. With the lid locked, it’s not going anywhere.
Twist the lid on.
It hisses. When the pressure inside the pot increases to a high level, it will start hissing. Putting my “I’m not an expert” hat on, I believe the hissing happens when the pressure inside is too great, and the hissing is the “I’m too pressurized!” value releasing the excess pressure. The hissing is also a noise that reminds you, “Oh, right, I gotta turn the temperature down now.”
Leave it be. When your beans or stew or whatnot is done, just turn the heat off and let the pressure come down naturally. There will be some sort of indicator on your lid that will tell you when that happens (more of an explanation below). The steam within the sealed pot is SUPER heated and can severely burn you. So, take your time opening the lid and always open the lid AWAY from you. IF YOU MUST open the lid soon, you can place the sealed pot under running water to help bring the temperature and the pressure down. Again, the indicator on the lid will tell you when they’ve come down.
By way of example, here’s a simple recipe for cooking dried beans of any kind, and we used chickpeas.
Basic Beans in Aromatic Broth (based on the Pressure Perfect recipe)
- 1 lb. dried beans (in this case, chickpeas), rinsed and with bad beans removed
- 9 cups water
- 1 tsp kosher salt
- 1 tbs oil (helps prevent foaming)
- 2-4 cloves of garlic, leave skin on
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 large carrot
- 1 large celery
- Leek greens (if you have them)
-Add all ingredients in a 6-qt. or larger pressure cooker. Lock the lid according to your manual.
Everyone in the pool!
-Turn the heat on high and bring the pressure within the cooker to high. AS AN EXAMPLE, high pressure is indicated on our Kuhn-Rikon when two red bars appear.
The two red bars indicate high pressure has been reached.
-Turn heat down so it’s just hot enough to maintain the pressure at high. In our case, we turn our gas from high down to just between “2” and “lo.” That works perfectly.
-Maintain high heat for the number of minutes indicated in your pressure cooker book for that specific bean. For chickpeas, that would be 28-30 minutes for a firm bean (for stews and such) and up to 35 for a softer chickpea that would be used in purees such as hummus.
-When the timer goes off, you can let the pressure come down naturally (15-20 minutes or so) or put it under cool running water until the pressure comes down. TILT the lid away from you no matter what. You gotta be careful.
Chickpeas in their broth after about 28 minutes at high pressure followed by about 20 minutes on a natural cool-down.
-Try a few. Too firm? Hard, in fact? Put the lid in place, lock it, and bring it up to pressure again for between 1-5 minutes, depending on how firm you think they are. Go through the same depressurizing process.
-Look at that! You made beans!!
-Lorna suggests that if you have the time, let the beans cool in their liquid. That way they will complete the cooking process. Meanwhile, remove the carrot, celery, bay leaves and garlic, and discard.
-When you are ready to drain, you should totally reserve that cooking liquid. It’s ideal as a water or veggie stock replacement in soups or stews. So, put a colander over a bowl to catch the brothy goodness.
Reserve the tasty liquid and use it as a replacement for water or stock in soups and stews.
Still on the fence about using a pressure cooker? Leave a comment below and let me know where you stand!
A second try at hummus
February 17, 2012 § 3 Comments
“Second” is the key word here.
The first attempt was not documented by Dainty. You can guess the reason. Not that great. Boring. Thick. Spackle-like. Did I say tasteless? And it was surprising, too, since it was a Moosewood recipe.
Live and learn. And when it comes to reliable recipes for basic stuff, I have learned to turn to Alton Brown.
I’ve also learned that recipes are not brought down from on high by Moses—they are flexible. And I’ve become way more willing to be flexible with them. And I certainly had to in this case. It turns out that when using the amount of chickpeas the recipe calls for, I had to double the amount of liquids, too, in order to get it to a consistency I preferred. No more hummus spackle for me.
The recipe calls for 1 lb. of dry chickpeas soaked and brought back to edibleness. Jennifer had pressure-cooked a batch on Sunday—adding some carrot, celery and bay leaf—to add to a curry dish we had earlier in the week. But we had lots leftover. Hummus, I thought. Perfect.
But as I’m making the hummus—and it’s not the consistency of typical hummus—I’m thinking … Hmmm, maybe the recipe is wrong or I have way too many chickpeas here.
That said, I’m revising Alton’s recipe a bit.
Ingredients 
- 1 lb. dry chickpeas, prepared as directed on the bag (it’s not the equivalent of canned chickpeas, keep that in mind!)
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1.5 tsp kosher salt
- 5 tbs freshly squeezed lemon juice – or more to taste
- 1/2 cup water*
- 1/3 cup tahini
- 1/2 cup evoo*
- powdered sumac or paprika
- salt and pepper
*these were the ingredients I had to double for a smoother, less spackle-like consistency
1. Whir up the chickpeas, garlic and salt in a food processor for 20-30 seconds. Scrape down the sides and whir it up again for about the same time.
2. Scrape sides. Add lemon juice and water. Whir it up again for 30 seconds.
3. Scrape sides. Add tahini and do it again.
4. With food processor running, drizzle in olive oil – not the entire thing, though. Stop and scrape when you’ve added 3/4 of it, check the consistency, add 4 good-sized pinches of salt, a half-dozen grinds of fresh black pepper, some shakes of sumac if you have it or some paprika, and whir it up again, adding the rest of the oil if you need it. You may need more oil, so go for it. Remember to adjust seasonings if you do. It’s okay to add a pinch and grind and shake here and there. Be moderate.
5. Enjoy it on a chip.
hummus with the consistency just the way I like it
For some reason, when I taste this it reminds me of egg salad. And I think that’s because of the pepper. If you despise egg salad, don’t judge—that was just my memory playing tricks on me. It’s perfectly tasty hummus, and my guinea pigs agree.
By the way, this recipe makes the perfect amount if the 5th Battalion is coming over, or if you’re having a party. Seriously, way too much for just having around the house.
Enjoy. And if you have comments, there’s a big box below just waiting for you.
The Dainty Dot 