hummus – It's Not F***ing Rocket Science

Lockdown may have eased somewhat but finances are still really strained so cheap food wins are still as important as ever and this hummus has become a weekly staple here at the cottage.

This hummus is ready in just a few minutes, it’s really easy and can be customised depending on your mood. Throw in some jarred roasted red peppers, fresh basil, coriander, roasted aubergine, make it using butter beans, cannellini beans, whatever you have to hand. If you have a glut of courgettes (as many do at this time of year!) why not make my raw courgette hummus, it’s packed full of goodness and tastes kickass too.

Ingredients:

1 can chickpeas (plus about half of the liquid in the can)
3 garlic cloves (I like it really garlicky!)
juice of half a lemon
1 tsp ground cumin
pinch sea salt (I like to use smoked) and pepper to taste if you like
3 tblsp tahini
smoked paprika
drizzle of olive oil to serve

Method:

Drain the chickpeas, reserving the liquid in a mug. Put almost all the chickpeas into a “Nutribullet (or any blender but the Nutribullet gets it really smooth and creamy) reserving a few to garnish.
Add in the garlic, lemon, cumin and tahini and about half of the chickpea juice (aquafaba). Blitz and add more liquid if needed. Taste and add salt and pepper if required then blitz again.
Pop into a serving bowl, scatter with reserved chickpeas, the smoked paprika and a drizzle of oil. I like to leave it to sit for at least 30 minutes before serving to allow all the flavours to develop with each other.

It sounds like its going to be horrid but is really, REALLY good. Win.

For the last 2 weeks I’ve been living on juices of fresh vegetables and fruits. Yep, three times a day I fire up my juicer and that’s my day’s food sorted. Yes this sounds pretty weird but a few weeks ago I was feeling so poorly with a bug that was going around that I started to think a great deal about the body’s ability to heal itself.

I figured that my body wants to heal itself, indeed it does heal itself constantly throughout the day and in order to do this it needs me to give it the right nutrients. I decided to try eliminating any bad nutrients (ALL the funs stuff) and JUST give it the good stuff to see how that affected it, if at all.

The yellow courgette hummus is oh so pretty

It was pretty tough to start as I also write for Metro and am commissioned to create a recipe to accompany each episode of The Great British Bake Off so I’ve been baking a HUGE amount of delicious food that I wasn’t able to eat (OK so I HAD to try a bit).

The hardest may have been Pie Week as I made about 20 pork pies and they were all kinds of awesome including this gorgeous monster pork and piccalilli pie with homemade piccalilli…

This pie is the pie of the gods.

BUT I persevered and I feel SO much better for it. Every now and then I cheat and make something to eat, always raw and packed full of nutrients though and this courgette hummus has become quite a regular fixture on my “cheat” menu. I got the idea from a brilliant book called Eat Yourself Beautiful by Lee Holmes which I was sent earlier this year, it’s an absolutely brilliant book and I highly recommend it. In the book Lee uses blanched almonds as the base with the courgette but I prefer the Omega mix and played around with the recipe until I found something that worked for me.

Raw courgette hummus

1 medium courgette, grated (skin and all)
1 tablespoon tahini
1 handful Omega seed mix (available from shops, contains sesame, linseed, sunflower and pumpkin seeds)
1 clove garlic
juice of half a lemon
freshly ground black pepper
pinch sea salt flakes
bit of water to loosen if needed

Simply put everything into a food processor and blitz until smooth, sprinkle with some more Omega seed mix.