Mark's hummus
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Mark's hummus

Sharper than the hummus you know, and built to hold up under everything you pile on it.


At a Glance

Story

Most hummus tastes warm and earthy, cumin and lemon sitting on the nutty tahini underneath. There is no cumin in this one, and no warm spice at all. In its place are three cold sharp things, lemon, wine vinegar and yogurt, so it comes out bright and tangy where you were expecting deep and dusty. The vinegar is the one nobody sees coming. It brings a fruity sharpness citrus can't, and the yogurt cools the whole thing down behind it.

Ingredients

  • 2 15 oz can chickpeasdrained and rinsed
  • ⅔ cup tahinistirred well in the jar
  • ½ cup cucumberchopped (a 2 to 3 inch piece)
  • 4 cloves garlic
  • ⅓ cup full-fat Greek yogurt
  • 1 lemonzest and juice
  • 2 tbsp red or white wine vinegar
  • ½ cup extra virgin olive oilhold back 2 tbsp for the top
  • saltto taste

Method

This came from Mark, a chef and a friend, who fed an entire office until there was no office left to feed.

It is sharper than the hummus you know, and that is deliberate. This was built to sit under a pile of grains and roasted vegetables and still be heard from down there. Eat it with warm pita by all means. It was born to be a base.

  1. Tip the chickpeas, tahini, cucumber, garlic, yogurt, lemon zest and juice, vinegar and a generous pinch of salt into a full-size food processor. Everything but the oil goes in at once. The cucumber is doing a quieter job than it looks: it is almost entirely water, and water beaten in under the blade is what turns the whole thing pale and light instead of dense.
  2. Run it for five to seven minutes. That is not a typo, and it is the entire recipe. Anything less gives you a purée. It takes that long under the blade for the chickpeas to break past grainy into properly silky, so scrape the sides once, put something on and let the machine get on with it.
  3. For the last two minutes, with the motor still running, pour the olive oil in a thin steady stream. Slowly, against a moving blade, is what emulsifies it, and emulsified is the difference between creamy and merely oily.
  4. Taste and salt it properly. Hummus takes more salt than anyone expects and sits there tasting flat until suddenly it does not. Scrape it into a bowl, drag the back of a spoon through the top in a spiral, and pour the reserved oil into the well. That oil never met the blade, so it still tastes of olives.

Keeps four or five days in the fridge, which is shorter than a hummus with no yogurt in it. It will weep a little as it sits. Stir it back together and say nothing.


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