The One Where She Kills the Blender...

Remember how every episode of the TV show Friends was titled with "The One Where...?" Like "The One Where Where Chandler Can't Cry" or "The One with the Embryos" (which features the Ross-created game that pits Monica and Rachel against Joey and Chandler - classic). Yeah, if my life was a Friends show, yesterday would have been titled "The One Where She Kills the Blender."

 It all started because I wanted hummus. I've been on a hummus kick for the last few days. And when I get on a kick, that's all I want to eat. I'd call it a craving, but cravings come and go, you know? A kick lasts longer...days, weeks (or until "that time of the month" ends, just sayin'). So on Monday, when the hummus kick hit, I was grocery shopping and picked up some Sabra-brand hummus. Deeeee-lish. It was gone in less than 48 hours. However, it's also a bit on the pricey side (thought I noticed Target sells it for $3 less than our grocery store). So I said to myself, we can make this stuff. It'll be cheaper and potentially healthier too. 

Problem: I've never made hummus before in my life.

Solution: Turn to a couple of friends - my friend A, who is something of a kindred spirit in the cooking/food department, and my other good friend, The Internet. I knew A would probably have a recipe for hummus, and she did. But in searching on the internet, I also found a few ideas and suggestions that I incorporated.

A's recipe comes from Dave Lieberman of the Food Network and can be found here.  One of the big things I appreciated about this recipe on first glace was that it doesn't use tahini which, let's be honest, can be hard to find in middle-of-nowhere midwestern towns like the one I live in.  It's not like Whole Foods or Trader Joe's is just down the block.  I can usually cobble together pretty decent international fare by visiting the two major grocery stores in town along with a trip to the Walmart Supercenter (which is decidedly not super) or Target.  But traipsing to 4 different stores with the Little One in tow just looking for tahini?  No thanks.  This recipe uses sesame oil instead of tahini and sesame oil is much easier to get your hands on around here.

Now, in reading about hummus on the internet, two tips stuck out at me.  One was to take the skins off your chickpeas if you want a super creamy hummus (I did.)  The other was to use a blender as opposed to a food processor - again, if you want to have a creamier hummus.  Taking skins off of chickpeas isn't as putzy as some people online complained about it being.  I thought it was more like Popping Bubblewrap: Kitchen Edition.  There was something a bit satisfying about squeezing each chickpea between my fingers and having the skins pop off.  But it does take a decent amount of time to skin 2 cans of chickpeas.  Tip: rinsing them under cold water helps.  If it starts to get difficult to skin them, rinse under cold water again.  Bottom line: if you want creamy hummus, skin your beans.  If you don't care, don't worry about it.

I would also recommend adding the lemon juice, cumin, and garlic in their recommended quantities at first and increasing depending upon your tastes.  Like A said to me, lemons vary in their juiciness and acidity.  One half of one lemon might be plenty.  One half of another lemon might not be enough. Sample your hummus before you're finished with it and up your lemon, cumin or garlic accordingly. I ended up using an entire small lemon and adding a few extra dashes of cumin.

So, chickpeas were skinned, other ingredients were assembled, I was ready to go.  Put my chickpeas and oil in the blender only to see my olive oil oozing out the bottom of the machine.  Well that's not good, says I.  I dumped the chickpeas and oil into a bowl to investigate the seals and whatnot, tightened the band at the bottom, and figured we were good to go.  To be on the safe side, I measured out the rest of my ingredients into the bowl that I put the chickpeas into and added a little extra oil to make up for what leaked out previously.  Then I put the whole shebang into the blender and started blending.  I would recommend blending until the desired creaminess/smoothness is obtained.  Depending on your blender and your tastes, this could be anywhere from a couple of minutes to 10 minutes.

And when my hummus was about 2 minutes away from my desired texture, my blender died.  No warning, not a sputter or a wheeze - she just up and quit.  I'm not qualified in kitchen forensics, so I don't know if the blender dying had anything to do with the leaky jar, but either way, the blender was dead.  Ugh.  At least the hummus was pretty well close to being done, so I scraped it into a container, garnished it with fresh parsley from my garden and some paprika (I kind of overdid it on the paprika, but the red against the yellow and green was just so pretty).

The Rubbermaid storage container is quite attractive, right?  Food stylist I am not.

 I sampled what was left inside the blender.  Tasty.  Quite tasty.  Lick-the-blender-clean tasty.  In fact, it was difficult not to sit down with the container of hummus and a bag of pita chips and just eat that for dinner.

And, because this blog is all about honesty in triumphs as well as failures, you should see the mess left behind by my hummus-making, blender-killing adventure:

From left to right: blender carcass, spices, olive oil, more blender carcass,  crockpot with  the night's supper in it.   Professional food blogger I am not.

Later on last night, I had some hummus and pita chips while watching TV with my husband.

"How do you like it?" I asked.

"Pretty good," He said.

"It was much cheaper to make this than buying the store-bought," I said.

Him: How do you figure?

Me: Chickpeas were 65 cents a can.  I had everything else in stock.

Him:  You're forgetting the replacement costs of the blender.

Me:  Oh...right...the blender.

End result: good hummus.  Cheaper than store-bought.  Unless you kill a blender.