Homous

My friend once told me that on the one and only occasion she could be bothered to make homous she discovered that it "didn't actually require as much oil as you might think." She said that as long as your put enough garlic and lemon juice in it you could pretty much get away with making it oil free. This inevitably sent my mind into homous overdrive. Imagine eating as much homous as you wanted! Because obviously 'oil free = fat free', and 'fat free = being able to stuff your face silly with it.'

The opportunity to make it arose when cleaning out my cupboard, I found a bag of dried chickpeas which on every previous occasion I had pulled out to cook, I would frustratingly shove it back in the cupboard because I would realise that I had absolutely no idea what to do with them. But this time was different. This time I had the motivation of fat-free homous at the back of my mind.

So how to cook them? Well, Nigella writes that you should soak them in water overnight with a tsp of baking powder and bicarb, drain and the next day, immerse them in water and put them on the stove with the lid on at a simmering heat for up to three hours. Nigella even mentions how the 'nutty' smell of the chickpeas will spread through the whole house and how enjoyable it will be for you. Nigella must have simply been boiling some nuts that day because my house ended up smelling of dead cat fur. And that was despite the bay leaves I had put in for extra flavour.

So when you're ready, blitz together two cups of the cooked and cooled chickpeas, three tbsps of tahini, the juice of one lemon, four cloves of garlic, a tsp of cumin and then, with the food processor still on, pour hot water into the funnel a little bit at a time until you get the homousy consistency you're after. And I know we're after a low-fat homous but just for authenticities sake, stir through a tablespoon of olive oil.

If you're a sucker for sun-dried tomatoes then add five to the food processor. For those who like olives in their homous sandwiches but couldn't take any more embarrassing olive-falling-out-of sandwich-and-on-to-lap moments, then simply blitz a handful into the mixture. If you use kalamata olives, it makes it go purple!