Humus Recipe II
We have an easy recipe that will teach you how to make humus and hummus and houmous! Three for the price of one, which is for free.
In the hummus blog, we prefer to spell our favorite dish with double m’ (hummus). This is also the correct spelling as far as we can tell. The problem is, many people spell it “humus” when looking us in the search engines. So, if you got here looking for a “humus recipe”, click this link: Humus Recipe.
If you link to it, save it as a favorite, or comment about it in your blog (please do!) you can call it “a humus recipe” or “a hummus recipe”. And if you want to be a real saint, you can even give us two links: one pointing here, saying “humus recipe” and the other to the “hummus recipe” page.
This may seem to you as no more then a boring technicality, but spelling issues are (almost) everything when it comes to building a successful community. And this blog, by all means, is intended to create a flourishing online hummus community, the first of it’s kind.
In order to archive that, we shell of course have to merge all the sub-communities created by different spellings, such as houmous, homous, humous, chumus, hoomoos, and god knows what else. Thanks for your kind help.
Is Hummus good for your diet?
There’s a little argue about the culinary virtues of hummus. There is some confusion and misunderstanding about it’s nutritional value, though. Is hummus good for you? Is it good for your health? Will it make you fat? Is it really that rich in vitamins and other healthy stuff, or is all that merely a myth, encouraged by people with commercial interests?
Also read: Hummus Nutritional Facts
In the coming posts I’ll try to clear things up a little. This time, we’ll talk specifically about the alleged fattening affect of hummus.
Read more
Arbis: the ultimate chickpea snack
Arbes is so simple to make, and so tasty, that after you know the recipe you might find yourself eating it all the time. It also has an interesting story.
Arbes (or “arbis”) is a traditional dish, originally eaten by jews on the “Shalom Zachar” feast (usually pronounced “Shulem Zucher”). When a child is born, the family hosts a ceremonial meal, where it is customary to serve the arbes.
Arbes is basically a snack - cooked chick peas with salt and pepper. Very simple, very easy to make, and unbelievably tasty.
Ironically, “Arbes” is actually the Yiddish word for “peas”, not chickpeas. And besides the “Ashkenazic” Jews (European) who gave it the Yiddish name, it is also eaten by Sephardic Jews (from North Africa and Arab countries) such as Iraqi Jews who call it “Lablabi” and add cumin to it.
This is how you make it (about 5-10 servings):
1. Soak 2 cups of chickpeas over a night.
2. Drain and wash carefully, then cook for about an half an hour.
3. Add some baking soda and cook for another 1/2-1 hour, until soft (the chick peas should be soft enough for you to squash between two fingers, but not too soft).
4. Add lots of salt and freshly grained pepper.
5. Eat.
Hummus, Tahini and Panic
Two weeks ago, a series of packaged Hummus products were recalled from supermarkets all over the UK. A routine check found them to be contaminated with salmonella. No illnesses were reported, but there was panic on the streets of London. Or so we heard.
This story brought to attention the growing popularity of hummus in Britain. The UK today is a fast growing market for hummus, and so is the US.
Just think of the consequences of such a contamination if it happened in one of the Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia. Well, it didn’t. But 26 million Saudis thought it had.
At the same time the Brits got panicked about their hummus, the Saudi newspapers reported that most of the Tahini products in the country contain a carcinogenic ingredient called “tio2″.
Tahini - in case you didn’t know - is a sesame seed paste, which is the second most important ingredient of hummus, after chickpeas. Saudis eat lots of both. It took the SFDA (Saudi Food & Drug Authority) some time until they posted this formal announcement which confirmed their initial claim: the suspicious substance does not cause cancer.
Tio2 (Titanium dioxide), also known as E171, is a perfectly safe color additive, commonly used in drugs (all kinds of white pills), cosmetics and foods. There is a good chance of finding it in your toothpaste, your shampoo (if it’s white), and your coffee whitener as well.
The American FDA, for example, lists it with the safest sources for pigments, alongside some fruits. Studies had found it to be safe in dosages 300 times greater than those used in Tehini.
So of course this was a hoax - and not a new one, by the way. I once got a SPAM massage with a warning about Tio2. I wonder if the Saudis got it too.
The Emerging Hummus Market in the US
American household are embracing the hummus. The packaged hummus products now sell 30 times what they did a decade ago. 10 year ago, most Americans didn’t know what Hummus was. Today, the packaged hummus has grown into an estimated $143 million business, says Associated Press.25 years after Israel and 15 years after the UK, you can now find it in mainstream groceries all over the states. Some still spell it “Humous” or “Chumus”, but it is more common now to find Tehina (or “Tahini“, sesame seed butter) in it’s list of ingredients, as you would in Middle Eastern restaurants.
Currently, there are about 80 American hummus manufacturers, and according to an ACNielsen study, sales has increased 25% last year. Common predictions talk about up to 50% growth by the end of this decade.
In part, the growth is attributed to healthier eating trends, and hummus - even in it’s industrialized form - is considered a natural food, and by all means healthier than most other dips. Actually, it was very popular in natural food stores for a while. But recently, even 7-11 has begun selling hummus throughout their eastern shore stores.
In Israel, a recent study has decreased packaged hummus sales a bit, showing it’s nutritional value is inferior to that of a freshly made hummus. Since “hummusiot” - restaurants which specialize in hummus - are very common in Israel, it is relatively easy to replace the industrial substitute with the original dish.
Israeli manufacturers such as Strauss, Tsabar and others, address Israeli market with low calorie products for some time, and there are also a few health food restaurants in Israel, selling organic hummus. But the simple truth is there nothing like the freshly homemade hummus (and here is our hummus recipe, btw).
Hummus instead of Prozac
A recent research conducted by Israeli scientists, has interesting findings concerning the popularity of Hummus. It’s all about mood they say - chickpeas are the ancestors of Prozac.
It is a known fact that Chickpeas, as well as other legumes, contain a large dosage of Tryptophan, an amino acid which is an important building block of serotonin. The latter, is a neurotransmitter, the lack of which modern biochemistry and psychiatry agree is strongly connected with “mood disorders” such as anxiety and minor depression.
Nowdays, the lack of serotonin is treated with SSRI (Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Medicines such as Prozac, Seroxat, Cipralex etc.) which increases the amount of serotonin in the brain. A Tryptophan rich diet has a similar effect.
The Cicer Arietinum (a.k.a chickpea) is the richest in Tryptophan specie throughout it’s genus of plants.
What the researchers (Professor Avi Gopher, Dr. Zohar Kerem, Professor Simcha Lev-Yadun, Dr. Shachar Abbo.) say, is that the chickpea was probably cultivated due to its’ rich Tryptophan content. Ancient men were better skilled than us in recognizing healthy foods and getting their nutritional needs from foods - very much like we can see in animals.
Thousands of years better, hummus is a common dish in a growing number of countries because it tastes good - but also for it’s nutritional value. Ironically, in both cases, people tend to say eating hummus makes them “feel good”…
A Hummus to die for
How did Salmonella germs got into the Icelandic Hummus from M&S?
Salmonella germs found last Wednesday in two Hummus products, led to a bit of a Hummus-panic across the UK. Marks & Spencer was the first to announce a recall of the products, manufactured by the Icelandic Bakkavor Group and distributed in Britain by Katsouris.
Marks & Spencer says they discovered the salmonella contamination during a routine check, and that there are no reports of illness from customers. However, Katsouris has officially announced that they are taking the products off the shelves of several supermarkets, including Sainsbury’s, Somerfield, Tesco, Waitrose and the Co-op.
For further coverage of the story:
Hummus food scare widens [Gardian Unlimited]
M&S withdraws houmous after salmonella threat [EarthTimes.com]
Bakkavör Group product recall in the UK [Bakkavör website]
Updated statement regarding the recall [Bakkavör website]
What puzzles me, is Bakkavor’s declaration that “The cause is related to a raw material” of the dish. Salmonella, a pretty nasty germ causing everything from digestion problems to death, is usually distributed through animal protein tissues. It’s main sources in human foods are poultry and eggs.
The common ingredients of Hummus are chick-pea grains, tehina or “tahini” (sesame paste), garlic and some spices. So what was this mysterious ingredient used by Bakkavor that could be contaminated with Salmonella?
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