We have a bunch of dried chickpeas, and I had a jar of giardiniera which was mostly unused. So, I decided to make some hummus! Giardiniera hummus!

Seriously, it doesn’t actually get any better than this.

Oh wait no. So, apparently, I have some sun dried tomatoes lying around? Hell yes.

Food: Giardiniera Hummus!
Warning, this recipe is for about… two quarts? So, if you know you don’t wanna eat that much cut it down. Seriously.

Ingredients!

1 lb (or 1 cup-ish) dried chickpeas!
1 cup of tahini
3/4 cup of lemon juice 
6-8 cloves garlic
1/2 medium onion (You could use the whole thing, I just think it’s a little much)
1 jar giardiniera (about 16 oz)
1 “pinch” paprika
1 pinch of cumin 
1 tsp salt (more or less, to taste) 

Notes on ingredients:
1) I’m also adding a few sun dried tomatoes for an extra bit of flavor, but I’m not sure how it’ll turn out at this point, so I’m not including it in the ingredients or directions.
2) Seriously, the cumin makes it. Lots of people don’t put it in, but uh… it really can take your hummus from “hey this is pretty good” to “oh man. This is amazing.” 
3) I use 1 cup of dried chickpeas, but if you’re going to do canned, I’d say… 2 cans? I’m not really sure on how that’d turn out. I’ve never used canned, so I dunno.
4) Notice the lack of olive oil. You can add 1 tbsp if you want, but I personally find that there is enough in the giardiniera to more than make up for it, and its also infused with the delicious spicy flavor.
5) Also, on the giardiniera- I use a 16 oz jar of hot minced. You can use a mild one, but don’t use any less than 12 oz.

Method!

 1. Soak dried chickpeas for 8 hours. Ideally, you would do this before you go to work in the morning, or before you go to bed at night. I use a ratio of 2 parts water, 1 part chickpeas, because when soaked, they swell quite a bit. You may want to use more or less.
2. Drain and rinse chickpeas. Do not reserve the water.
3. Soak (or boil— I personally boil them) chickpeas for 1 more hour, in fresh/clean water.
4. While the chickpeas are boiling, dice the onion as finely as you can, peel and crush (or finely chop) your garlic, and get your other ingredients out.
5. When the chickpeas are done boiling, pour some of the water out into a bowl (roughly 1/4 cup. That, again, is my personal preference, but you can use as much or as little as you’d like)
6. Drain the chickpeas, and put them in a food processor, chopping them until they start to get a little grainy.
7. Add tahini, garlic, onion, cumin, salt, lemon juice, and the chickpea water you’d set aside.
8. Blend until mixed, and taste. You should have some pretty decent hummus at this point.
9. Add giardinierra, and blend until thoroughly mixed in.
10. Scoop it out into a serving bowl (or the bowl you’re going to serve it in)
11. Sprinkle some paprika over the top, serve, and enjoy.

(Sorry. I wrote this at around 3:00 or 3:30 pm, but forgot to finish the post before I ran off to do my various other things.)

When making hummus, I usually don’t actually measure out my ingredients, and kind of play it by ear. I quickly realized, however, that I didn’t remember my recipe right. After tooling around with it for a little bit, I remembered what it was I’d done wrong, and fixed the recipe accordingly.

Interesting fact about making your own hummus!

If for some reason, your hummus doesn’t come out as creamy as you’d like, you can actually add some milk or cream (whipping cream. Not coffee creamer) to give it more of a nice creamy texture. I don’t do this often, because I like my hummus a little chunky, but I’ve done it when it comes out far too grainy on more than one occasion.

I haven’t tried this with milk alternatives, but as they do have a little bit more flavor than milk, in addition to their tendency to separate if left out, I probably won’t really be trying it either.

Other notes?
Yes. I added some sundried tomatoes to this. As I was a little short on giardiniera, I added the marinated sundried tomatoes, plus some of the oil from the jar to make up for the lack of oily goodness.

I wandered off and left these unattended for a while, before realizing I left the heat on too high. If you let them come to a rolling boil for more than a few minutes, they’ll develop a foam on top. Theres nothing wrong with that really, but its just a little weird, is all. I scooped most of it off at this point, but you can still see some of it in this picture.

This is just the chickpeas, after being ground up in the food processor. Its usually when they look sorta like this that I start adding the other ingredients.

The finished product. The color is usually a little darker than this, but since I only used half the giardiniera that I usually do, it came out a bit lighter.

I should probably also note at this point, that I tried some of the hummus right after taking this picture, and it was mild but delicious. After coming back from hanging out and hitting the movies (7 or so hours later), there was definitely more of a kick to it.
Last time I made it (at full strength), it lasted almost a week. By the end, the heat had at least doubled. So beware. It gets stronger with age. 

So. I decided to make myself some dinner, and looked in the fridge, just to realize that we didn’t really have much of anything to make. Some canned tomatoes, corn, and beans, a tiny little block of cheese, some milk, and a bunch of dried grains. At a bit of a loss, I pulled open the vegetable crisper, and saw that we had a bunch of Brussels Sprouts that had been in there for a couple of weeks, and were probably on the verge of going bad.

I’ve never made Brussels Sprouts before, so I didn’t really know what to do, but I found a recipe on this page after a quick search, and not only did it sound fantastic, I had all the ingredients to make it!

Ingredients!

1.5 lbs Brussels Sprouts
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp butter 
2 cloves of garlic 
1 medium onion (or 1/2 large onion)
salt and pepper
 

Method!

 1. Wash your sprouts! Cut off the bottoms, and remove any leaves that appear to be bad.
2. Bring a pot of water to a boil.
3. Add the Brussels Sprouts to the water, and cook for 5 minutes.
4. While the sprouts are cooking, finely chop your garlic and onion.
5. After the time is up on your sprouts, drain them, and rinse with cold water, until they’re cool to the touch.
6. Cut the sprouts in half (top to bottom).
7. Heat a skillet or sautee pan, and add oil.
8. Once oil is hot, add your onions, and cook until they begin to caramelize.
9. Add garlic, and cook thoroughly. —I put this as its own step, because garlic, especially when finely chopped, burns fairly quickly.
10. Add the Brussels Sprouts, I put them in “face down” (open side down?), and let ‘em cook until they were a golden brown color, and then stirred and tossed ‘em until they started to get that color all over.
11. Add your balsamic, and then let it cook until it no longer gives off such a strong vinegar-y smell.
12. Add your butter, and then salt and pepper to taste.
13. Stir until the butter is all melted, and everything is mixed in together, and then serve and enjoy! It’s best right out of the pan. 

Optional side! Rye Toast!

Ingredients:

Sliced Rye Bread

Method!

1. Take your slices of rye, and rub them along the bottom of the pan you used to make your dish, to soak up the flavors.
2. Add your extra tablespoon of butter
3. Toast the rye bread, to your own desired level of crispiness. 
4. Eat it with, or after the sprouts. I liked using it to soak up the juice that had escaped to the bottom of the bowl. It really complimented the flavor of the dish. 

And you can’t tell me that this doesn’t look amazing.

Note of interest: I didn’t have any garlic or onion, so I used a medium sized shallot instead, and it came out really well, so that is a possibility as well.
Note of slightly less interest: Sorry if I broke the directions down a little too much. Its easier for me that way. If you’d rather see me do it differently, just let me know, and I’ll cut it down to 3-5. 

I forgot to take a picture of it with the toast, in the bowl, before I ate it. But uh… you get the idea. Fan-friggin-tastic.