There's a Hummus Amongus

Hummus is a dip or spread in almost every Middle Eastern cuisine. At the most basic, it's a purée of cooked chick peas, tahini, lemon juice and olive oil. It is often flavored with garlic, herbs or other additions.

I made mine with dried chick peas. Preparing chick peas is the same as preparing any other dried legume. First, sort through the beans to make sure there're no foreign objects in them, then give them a good rinse.

Here are the dried beans:

After a 24 hour soak, they plump up and soften slightly.

The soak not only shortens the cooking time, but it also leeches out the oligosaccherides from the beans. Oligosaccherides are indigestible by humans, and are what cause the digestive distress associated with eating beans.

After the soak, rinse the beans again and put them in a large pot. Cover with water and bring to a simmer. While this was going on for this hummus, I put a few crushed cloves of garlic in a pan of olive oil over low heat.

While these cooked, I juiced a lemon and whisked the juice with some tahini. You can find tahini with the peanut butter in most stores. It is similar to peanut butter, but it's made with sesame seeds instead of peanuts.

I mixed tahini and the lemon juice in a bowl

Once the beans were tender, I poured off most of the liquid into a bowl, then added the garlic and oil to the beans. I puréed them with a stick blender briefly, then added the tahini and lemon mixture. Then I puréed again, adding some olive oil and some of the cooking water to get a good dipping texture.