Home made houmous, hummus, homas, however you want to spell it!

Mr VST is getting hungry! He's pretty much always hungry or at the very least ready to eat food but with his promotion at work his brain is having to work harder than it has in a while and it's creating a demand for calories. He has pretty much been eating two lunches a day for the last few weeks (and annoyingly has lost weight!). One of the snacks I thought I could send him to work with was some houmous and various things to dip into it. I googled for recipes, as you do, and came across a whole blog just on making houmous called the hummus blog! As they appear to have tried quite a few recipes and come up with the ultimate one I thought I'd try that one so here it is. The bag of chickpeas I bought was 500g I thought I'd make the lot into houmous!  

Ingredients
[4 bowls of houmous]
200g dried chickpeas (the smallest you can find)
150g tahini
juice from 1 squeezed lemons
1-2 garlic cloves
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1 tablespoon + 1/8-1/4 teaspoon baking soda
salt
olive oil
parsley

Method

1. Poor the chickpeas over a large plate. Go over them and look for damaged grains small stones, or any other thing you would rather leave out of the plate.

2. Wash the chickpeas several times, until the water is transparent. Soak them in clean water over night with 1 tablespoon of baking soda. Then, wash it, and soak again in tap water for a few more hours. The grains should absorb most of the water and almost double their volume.

3. Wash the chickpeas well and put them in a large pot. Cover with water, add the rest baking soda and NO salt. Cook until the grains are very easily smashed when pressed between two fingers. It should take around 1-1.5 hours, during which it is advised to switch the water once again, and remove the peels and foam which float over the cooking water. When done, sieve the grains and keep the cooking water.

4. Put the chickpeas into a food processor and grind well. Leave it to chill a little while before you continue.

5. Add the tahini , lemon juice, crushed garlic, cumin and salt if desired and go on with the food processor until you get the desired texture. If the Humus is too thick, add some of the cooking water. It should be thinner than the actual desired texture.

Serve with some good olive oil and chopped parsley

I needed to add a little bit of water to the mix as mine was a little thick. I was also a little lazy and didn't remove the skins of the chickpeas. I wish I had as I'm pretty sure it was them that caused the slightly bitter aftertaste. The houmous was less bitter though after it had cooled and I had thinned it a little.

I was slightly concerned after cooking all my chickpeas and then reading the recipe which said it made four large bowls already. I used only 2/5 of the chickpeas for the houmous and then sorted the skins from the remaining 'peas. There weren't actually that many left and the recipe didn't make as much as I first thought it would so I think I'm going to make a skinless batch of houmous and see if I can get rid of the bitter taste.