Humus: better when made at home

The greatest tragedy of working the night shift is that I rarely get the chance to cook meals. Sure, I'll occasionally boil pasta and chop up veggies for a salad, which I then take to work and put in the break room refrigerator for later consumption, but that's not really cooking.

Last night, with a rare weeknight off from work (so that I can work one, if not two nights this weekend), I took the time to cook dinner with Scott and Lauren (my romantic accomplice was, unfortunately, unable to join us as she was attending to her own night-shift job). The centerpiece of the meal were two huge fillets of King Salmon, shipped to me from Alaska by Dante.

King salmon caught by rod-and-reel in Alaska is really excellent stuff (although I found myself wishing that I had moved my grill over to the new place), and the fish was well-complimented by pasta with fresh pesto, made from basil grown in Scott and Lauren's garden. A side of zucchini, also grown in their yard, was a nice compliment as well.

However, the greatest personal triumph to occur last through this veritable mid-week feast was some hummus I whipped up as Lauren was shredding basil. Although I've never put it into words quite as articulate as my brother's, I have a special love for hummus. It's my traditional post-ride recovery snack, and the perfect hunger-pang killer for when I get home from work at midnight -- one cracker full and I won't be hungry until morning.

I was certainly spoiled growing up by my family's proximity to Sahadi's and the whole middle-eastern neighborhood surrounding it (since gentrified). Now living in exile in upstate New York, I've been living off various brands of sub-par, store-bought hummus for the past few years. Then, when on vacation a couple weeks ago, I watched my Mom make a batch of hummus in a food processor. Never having previously given it any thought, it had never occurred to me that hummus is really easy to make.

I'm all about making my own versions of food that I'd otherwise have to buy at the store, so, instead of buying hummus on my weekly sojourn to Hannaford, I bought two cans of chick peas and a jar of tahini. Later, I combined the garbanzos with tahini, garlic cloves, olive oil, salt and pepper in my blender (traditionally used more in the winter for various soup adventures). About five minutes later Lauren, Scott and I were enjoying delicious humus that far-exceeded the taste and quality of anything you can buy in a grocery store (but still didn't measure up to Sahadi's). I also prefer the texture of blender humus to food processor humus, but I suppose that's a matter of taste.

I consulted Mark Bittman to get a general sense of the proportions (1/2 cup tahini for every 16 ounces of chick peas), but pretty much just improvised. Then I let Scott goad me into adding more garlic than I would have preferred, but so it goes. Even after snacking on the humus while we cooked dinner, I've still got enough from one batch to last a while, all while spending less than I would have on pint-sized container of Cedar's, or whatever.

So, make you're own, it's way better. As I was eating the hummus, it occurred to me that I should have taken photos of the process to post, as I did with the granola bars. I didn't. Oh well.