Boil two cups of
garbanzo beans (preferably dried and soaked overnight but this is real life and
sometimes we need to use canned – Whatever you do… don’t buy hummus. We will be
in a fight if you buy it) until tender. Strain them in your kitchen sink.
Pulse four, maybe
five, raw cloves of garlic in a food processor before adding the garbanzos.
When your food processor starts to struggle, squeeze in one lemon’s juice, add
a teaspoon each cumin and salt, and a tablespoon of tahini and keep on pulsing.
Splash in olive oil until it reaches the consistency you desire. I have to
taste and adjust the favoring two or three times until I get it just right.
Usually more lemon, then more salt the second time. Weird, right?
You can make the
hummus a couple days ahead of time; that makes this recipe sort of a one step
recipe, I mean it’s really still two, but if they are one different days I don’t
think it counts.
Spread the hummus
onto a serving dish, smoothing a mini dip for the all the fantastic it is about
to carry.
I like to eat, well
devour really, hummus at room temperature, but it’s still hot isn’t it. I mean,
it was just boiling… let that hummus chill.
Put a skillet on
medium heat and melt two tablespoons of butter. Dice half of a yellow onion and
add to the melted butter to sauté. Once the onions are translucent and half a
pound ground lamb and half a pound ground beef. Break the meat apart into tiny
pieces. I recommend using a pastry whip, but a spatula or spoon work fine too.
Add in one teaspoon each cinnamon and Lebanese seven pepper blend (you can
substitute with cumin or cardamom too). Salt too, of course. The meat should
take about fifteen minutes to cook all the way through, key an eye on it. Once
it is done add a splash of pomegranate juice and let it simmer off.
In a separate, dry
skillet toast half a cup of pinenuts.
Once the meat is
done cooking scoop the contents of the skillet on to the hummus bed you created
earlier and then top with the toasted pine nuts. Scoop with the treasured
Arabic bread you found at a far away, and practically hidden Middle Eastern
bakery. Daydream a little.
