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Hummus is a dip made from cooked chickpeas (garbanzo beans) and blended with tahini (ground sesame seeds sauce), olive oil, garlic, and lemon juice. It’s a popular dish in the Mediterranean, Middle Eastern cuisines. I decided to add cilantro and blanched spinach in the recipe to make it more nutritious.

INGREDIENTS

• 2 cups of soaked chickpeas.
  (I prefer soaking chickpeas overnight and then pressure cook them instead of using canned ones.)
• 1 cup blanched spinach.
• Handful of cilantro (coriander) leaves.
• 2 small garlic cloves.
• 3 tbsp lemon juice.
• 4 tbsp of olive oil.
• 4 tbsp tahini sauce.
• 1 tbsp red crushed peppers.
• 1/2 cup Ice-cold water.
• Salt as per your taste.

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RECIPE

• Soak chickpeas overnight.
• Pressure cook chickpeas until they are mushy. If you don’t have a pressure cooker, boil them in water on a medium heat.
• Discard the water and let the chickpeas cool down.
• Pour tahini sauce, lemon juice, salt, and add chopped garlic cloves in a blender (Use a powerful blender like Vitamix or Blendtec).
  (Tahini sauce plays a vital role in hummus. I prefer to make tahini sauce at home. It’s common to use roasted sesame seeds for making tahini sauce, but I don’t like the flavor of roasted sesame seeds in the hummus, so I use raw sesame seeds for making tahini sauce.)
• Add 2 tbsp of ice-cold water, process the combined ingredients, and let the mixture rest.
• Next, add drained chickpeas, cilantro, and blanched spinach in the blender.
• Drizzle 2 tbsp of olive oil, a couple of tbsp of ice-cold water, and blend until you get the fine and fluffy consistency.
• Scrape the hummus into a serving plate, create swooshes using a spoon, and add little tahini sauce in the middle.
• Drizzle remaining olive oil in the swoosh around tahini.
• Garnish hummus with crushed red chili peppers and few cooked chickpeas, as shown in the following picture.

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• Enjoy the hummus with pita chips or cut carrots and cucumber.

Make sure the leftover hummus is kept in an air-tight container, it stays well in the refrigerator for a week.