Recipe corner: a basic template for houmous

It's been an up and down few weeks since I last posted.  In reality, very little has changed.  Our household (me, D, the cat) remain much as before the lockdown in the UK started lifting.  Because we are in the very fortunate position that we can both work full time from home, and have pretty much been able to get all shopping delivered throughout, we have decided to keep more or less to ourselves for the foreseeable.  Although the world has become very small, some days - most days - that feels OK.  I miss my extended family and I miss my work colleagues and I miss sitting in a bar with a pint and a packet of Scampi Fries, but the longer this goes on, the more "life before" takes on a certain dream-like quality.

But there are down moments.  I was broken by cake a couple of weeks ago.  It was good cake too - Nigella's Clementine Cake which is usually pretty foolproof but, on this occasion, because I was trying to deal with it alongside cooking something else, I rushed and it didn't come out of the tin properly; I ended up with half cake, half crumbs.  Such a small thing but I had a proper, screaming tantrum.  And then, for the next few days, found myself bursting into tears at random intervals.  To be clear, I don't think this was really about cake (and, in retrospect, it may have had a lot to do with hormones) but it made it obvious that I'm not 100% OK.  I don't think anyone in the world is 100% OK at the moment.  The fact that I'm OK an awful lot of the time puts me among the very, very luckiest of people.

Anyway, I post the below recipe more for my future reference than anything else - but if you are a houmous fan and have never made it yourself then I think it is well worth it if you happen to have a decent little food processor handy.  The secret to the perfectly whipped texture is, of course, the liquid that the chickpeas were cooked (or canned) in.  I came quite late to this realisation and had all but given up making it before I found out because I only ever produced an oily, claggy disappointment of a mess.  It's taken me a few goes to get the proportions quite right but I think that I'm there now - so I record it for posterity.  

This recipe produces, to my mind, the perfect basic houmous.  All the flavours are in harmony, nothing is too strident.  Once you have that you can play around with your flavours. I didn't weigh out exactly how much this produced, but in terms of volume was probably about the equivalent of the size of standard pot you buy in a supermarket.  Precise, eh?

Note: A true aficionado will probably:

a) remove the skin from the chickpeas before blitzing but, I'm going to be honest, I am not that person.  The results without removing the skin are perfect for my unrefined palate and

b) shudder in horror at the prospect of "flavoured" houmous.  But again, I am not that person.  Caramelised onion houmous is my particular favourite - and it goes beautifully with cheese.  So there.

Ingredients

50g dried chickpeas, soaked in cold water overnight

1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/2 fat clove of garlic, finely grated or crushed

3 tsp lemon juice

2 tsp tahini

Tsp sea salt (or, a generous pinch if you don't tend to measure such things)

NB: if you are using tinned chickpeas, this amount dried equates to about half a drained tin.  Simmer them gently in the can liquid for 10 mins or so to soften slightly and then proceed per the recipe.  Then buy some dried chickpeas and try it that way next time - you'll never go back!

This is barely a recipe but...

Drain the soaked chickpeas and then put them in a large saucepan, add enough water to cover them by about a centimetre, add the bicarb and bring to a boil over a medium heat.

Boil until soft - by which I mean it will crush easily, with minimal pressure, between your thumb and index finger.  The timings will depend on your chickpeas - I gave my last lot just half an hour, but it can take longer.  Keep the water topped up to roughly a centimetre or so over the pulses throughout and skim off any of the grungy looking foam that rises to the top.

When cooked - drain RESERVING THE COOKING WATER.

Put the chickpeas in a little processor - nothing else initially - and blend to a coarse paste.  You then want to add enough of the cooking water to create a perfect texture - and should do this gradually, a tablespoon at a time.  I have found that my optimum texture comes from between 5 and 7 tablespoons of liquid.  What I would suggest is take it down to ever-so-slightly too thick (for me, I would check at 3 or

4 tablespoons).  Then add the other ingredients so you can gauge what effect these have.  And only then finish adding enough water to get it to where you need it to be. Remember, it may vary as it is partly dependent on how much liquid the chickpeas have absorbed during soaking and cooking.

Now you have your basic houmous you can go mad!  Drizzle with olive oil and strew with pomegranate seeds!  Whack up the garlic!  Throw something entirely incongruous (like, say, caramelised onion chutney that needs using up) in there.  Have fun.  And eat smeared on pitta, or toast, or just with a spoon.

With love to all of you out there who are not quite OK.  Rather like the weather today, things remain changeable and sometimes rather gloomy, but the sun, always, inevitably, indubitably, comes out in the end.

Meal planning from the bunker

Well, first full week of working from home completed. At the moment, I have set up shop on the dining room table while D is up in the study. This has proved to be an ill thought out plan on my part since it means that I tend to get landed with all the tea-runs.

The cat remains delighted with the situation and divides her time between sunbathing and jumping up onto my keyboard to take part in the many, interminable calls that are taking place at the moment. I have learned to mute the microphone so other people are spared her contributions to the conversation or the inevitable commotion caused by me attempting to scoop her down.

And we, we are ok. Our families and friends remain ok and for that I am extremely grateful. I woke up from a dream early this morning with a song in my head and I realised that it was the one that Rosemary Clooney sings to Bing Crosby in “White Christmas” about counting blessings instead of sheep. So my subconscious is obviously trying to encourage me to focus on the positives. It is never easy, especially when one is naturally of an anxious, pessimistic frame of mind, but those of us who are not on the frontline at the moment should be doing our very tiny bit by keeping calm and carrying on.

Those of you who know this blog will know that I have always been a meal planner. In fact, meal planning is one of the highlights of the weekend, often taking place over an end of week pint. It has become a slightly different beast at the moment as we are trying, in accordance with guidelines, to avoid shopping as far as we can, so it is all about looking at what we have rather than what we want. We already had a shopping delivery slot booked in for early next week (it’s our practice to do one big shop at the start of the month) but it looks like we won’t be able to get one after that since neither of us (very thankfully) fall into the vulnerable category and it also looks like many of the items we order a matter of course are unavailable. We’ve got a fruit and veg box coming Monday from a local firm and I’m hoping to make that a weekly, or at least fortnightly thing, so that we are not entirely reliant on the small Sainsbury’s Local for fresh produce and can avoid venturing out as far as humanly possible.

Anyway, we’ve just done a full inventory of the garage freezer so meals for the next few days are done:

Sausages, mash and onion gravy - every time I have been forced to break cover and go to Sainsbury’s, there have been sausages in the otherwise denuded chilled produce section so I’ve grabbed a pack. We batch cooked some sausage and bean stew this week (also throwing in some chopped cherry toms that were on the way out, harissa for a touch of fire and a handful of red lentils to thicken the whole) and there are a few left to produce a comfort food classic for tea.

Chicken breast, sage and onion stuffing, roast potatoes, honey roast carrots, peas. We always have a stock of chicken breasts in the freezer so we’re going to have a Sunday lunch. I’ve got plenty of root veg with more coming in the veg box, so am prioritising using these before it turns. I’ll probably do more potatoes and carrots than we need and freeze at the parboiled stage.

Turkey curry with rice and flatbreads - the curry has been in the freezer since Christmas so needs using up. I’ve got a cauliflower stalk that I’ve set aside and will blitz up and combine with the rice to up the veg content here (but don’t tell D!)

Ottolenghi’s dirty rice - well, sort of. The original recipe is here and it is DELICIOUS. We had some chicken livers in the freezer that we had earmarked to make a batch. We don’t have any pork mince but I am going to experiment with using some red lentils cooked nice and soft (for bulk and texture) with some finely chopped, rehydrated Shittake mushrooms (for a meaty flavour).

Tortellini soup - chilled, filled pasta is one of my favourite things and we discovered half a pack of prosciutto cappelletti which is not enough for a meal for two but I’ll use some butternut squash and carrots to make a light, creamy soup then throw the cappelletti into that to stretch it out. Garlic bread on the side - if we’ve cracked and eaten the last remaining garlic baguette by then I can make garlic flatbreads easily enough.

So, that’s five days worth of nice meals out of a quick freezer trawl which is quite gratifying and means I have five days where I don’t have to venture out. Hurrah.

Thoughts and prayers to all of you - hope you and yours are staying safe, well and nourished in these trying times.