Using Baking Soda

When cooking chickpeas, baking soda is used to soften the peas. Some say it affects the nutritional value and the flavor of the hummus. I tend to disagree.

One of the comments I do remember out of the batch I accidentally deleted earlier today (see the last post), was about baking soda. The person who wrote it noted that it has negative effect on the nutritional value, and also gives the hummus a soapy after taste.

He/she specifically mentioned the content of vitamin B which is presumed to be lost while cooking when using baking soda. Read more

Oops…

While moderating recent comments, I made a fatal mistake and deleted some 20 comments or so. If any of you guys wrote a comment which didn’t show up, please write them again. And in the words of Douglas Adams - sorry for the inconvenience.

The Hummus Diet: cause it works mate!

Yes, it sounds crazy, but you can eat hummus and actually get thin. Just don’t eat too much of them pita breads.

A friend of my parents (who’s a medical doctor, by the way) tried the Blood Type Diet a few years back. According to the theory, he was supposed to eat lots of proteins and very little carbohydrates if any. It didn’t go so well with meat so he tried hummus, and soon lost 16 kg (20 pounds).

It should come as no surprise to you if you know a bit about hummus. I already discussed the nutritional virtues of hummus in prior posts so I won’t go into too much details this time, but the fact is that hummus is really good for you. In every aspect.

Not only is it highly nutritional (as long as it’s made from dried chickpeas, not canned ones), but it’s also good for your metal health, and if it’s made properly (ok, recipe) than it should not make you heavy at all - just satiated for a few hours. Read more

Rescued by Hummus

I had one of my molar tooth yanked last Tuesday. A very nasty experience, I can tell you. In fact, it was so horrible that I bravely decided not to go into the details.

Anyhow, as I sat at home a few hours later, swollen and sad and very much in pain, I realized I’m pretty hungry. I already followed the common advice for such situations and ate a bucket of ice-cream, but ice-cream can hardly be called food.

Knowing that I can’t really bite anything, and I shouldn’t eat anything hot (such as soup), I dragged myself to a local hummus place and asked for hummus-meshawsha. Read more

Inside the Israeli Pita

Falafel, an ancient dish from Egypt, found itself in our era in the middle of this civilization collision mess. If only all other outcomes of cultural conflicts were so tasteful.

I’m afraid we are all living in what that famous Chinese saying calls “interesting times”. And it’s most certainly too interesting here, in Israel.

Even if you follow the news, you probably don’t get the full picture. It is complicated, and I’m really here to write about food, so I’ll say just that: both us Israelis and our Palestinians brothers, are good people with lousy leaders.

But well, I’m here to tell you about the complexity of the Israeli pita bread, so lets get down to it.
Read more

Pseudo hummus

It’s not enough to call a certain dish “hummus” for it to become hummus. If I had a nickel for every strange looking hummus I saw, I would probably have some… 20 bucks by now.

When I say “pseudo hummus” I refer to dishes which may look like hummus, or even have somewhat similar ingredients, but do not taste anywhere near the real thing. Of course, when something don’t even look like hummus, this may be a good indication for it not being hummus. Unfortunately, having tasted some of these hummus-mutations, I can assure you they do not come close. Read more

Video Tutorial: Making Hummus like in New-York’s Hummus Place

In our new video Shay, one of the guys from Hummus Place in New-York, is sharing the recipe and showing how to make real hummus.

Hummus Place is a New-York restaurant serving mostly hummus and middle-eastern dishes. I never been there, but people who did say their hummus is pretty good, so you can trust Shay - one of the owners, and the guy explaining the process of making hummus in the video - to know what he’s talking about.

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