Butterbean hummus with red pepper & walnut paste

February 25, 2017

We had such a great time at January's Ottolenghi-club, that we reconvened just a month later for Febru-lenghi, another celebration of Yotam's ridiculously good recipes. You'd think it would be getting hard to keep standards high, but this felt like one of the best club-meetings ever - you can get a full run-down over on our facebook page. 

I was home alone for the week and got a bit carried away, committing to three different dips - butternut and tahini spread, avocado and broad bean dip and this butterbean hummus with red pepper and walnut paste. This was all a fairly significant time commitment, although a lot of it was spent just waiting for things to roast or cool. The end result was amazing though - each one of these dips was somebody's favourite around the table. The beautifully fresh avocado and broad bean dip was the most summery, while the sweet and nutty pumpkin dip was a bit heartier. 

The fanciest of all was the butterbean hummus, which basically combined two dips - a red pepper paste reminiscent of the sauce we made for the eggplant kataifi last time and a pretty simple hummus. It's a winning combination and the stylish thyme and walnut garnish made it the most visually appealing of the three. The roasting and peeling of the peppers, chilli and garlic takes up a bit of time, but once that's done everything comes together very quickly. I can recommend serving with Turkish bread from A1 Bakery - they bake it to order and it is goddamn perfect.

Stay tuned for Cindy's dessert contribution next! There really is no better club than Ottolenghi club.

Butterbean hummus with red pepper and walnut paste

(a recipe from Ottolenghi's Guardian column)

red pepper & walnut paste

6 red peppers

8 whole garlic cloves

2 mild red chillies

1 tablespoon thyme leaves

salt

60g walnut pieces, lightly roasted

1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika

1/2 teaspoon tomato paste

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

hummus

2 cans butterbeans, rinsed and drained

100ml olive oil

1 garlic clove, skin on and lightly crushed

3 sprigs of thyme

salt

Start by roasting the peppers. Heat the oven to 220°C and lay the peppers, chillies and garlic cloves out on a baking tray.

Cook for 20 minutes and then take out the garlic and chillies, putting them aside in a bowl covered with cling-wrap. Keep the peppers going for another 20 minutes or so, until the skin is nice and blackened, then add them to the bowl and leave to cool.

Once everything is cool enough to handle you can peel and de-seed the chillies and the peppers and get rid of the garlic skins. Pop the peeled garlic, chillies and peppers in a food processor along with a generous sprinkle of salt and the thyme leaves and blitz it all to a paste. Add the tomato paste, vinegar and paprika and blitz again. Stir through half of the walnut pieces (the rest will be used as a garnish).

The first step for making the hummus is to make your oil nice and fragrant - put the crushed garlic clove and thyme sprigs and the olive oil into a saucepan and cook over medium heat until the garlic just starts to caramelise. Remove the clove and set aside a couple of tablespoons of the oil and the thyme sprigs for later.

Pour the rest of the infused oil into a food processor with the butterbeans and half a teaspoon or so of salt and blitz to a paste. Add water until you've got the hummus at the texture you want it to be.

To serve, spread the hummus out on a plate with a high ridge around the edge. Spoon the pepper and walnut paste into the middle before sprinkling over the walnuts, drizzling with the oil you've set aside and garnishing with the thyme sprigs. 

January 4, 2011: Muhammara II

Mum came through with another recipe calendar for Cindy's birthday this year and I mixed things up by taking charge of making January's dish. First up for the year was muhammara, something we've made from a different recipe and enjoyed before (the other version is also gluten-free). This turned out fairly similarly - it's a hearty and enjoyable dip.  We happily ate this for dinner with a bunch of chopped up vegies and some guacamole. If anything, it could have used a bit of an extra chilli kick to overcome the sweetness of the pomegranate - I'll know for next time.


Muhammara

1/3 cup breadcrumbs, lightly toasted
3 red capsicums, quartered and seeded
1 red chilli, seeded and chopped finely (maybe go to 2 next time)
1 clove garlic, crushed
2-3 tablespoons pomegranate molasses
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/3 cup finely chopped walnuts
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt

Grill the capsicum quarters until they blacken up nicely, and then cover them and leave to cool. Peel the blackened skin off.

Whizz the breadcrumbs, capsicum, chilli, garlic, pomegranate syrup, lemon juice and 2/3 of the walnuts in a food processor, and then pour in the oil with the motor running and season with salt.

Transfer to a bowl to serve and garnish with the remaining walnuts.

April 4, 2009: Green pumpkin-seed mole

Emily's Tex-Mex themed potluck has already been well covered by bloggers far more timely than Cindy and I. I'm not going to go through all the wonders that were produced - suffice to say the food was plentiful and consistently amazing. I gorged myself almost to bursting point.

Our contributions to the food fiesta were relatively modest - Cindy whipped up something sweet (which will no doubt appear here shortly) while I went mad with savoury accompaniments. Cindy recommended two of her previous Mexi-themed successes: the chipotle-onion sauce and the coleslaw from this post, and I added something new: green pumpkin-seed mole.

This is another Veganomicon recipe, and is as simple as the two linked to above - the only cooking required is a bit of pepitas toasting and then it's everything in a food processor. It did require a brief jaunt to Casa Iberica for canned tomatillos, but everything else was pretty straightforward. And it turned out a treat - only a little bit spicy, with the flavours coming more from the fresh herbs and onions, it was a nice cooling sauce to go with the more firey chipotle-based option.

Green pumpkin-seed mole

1 cup pepitas
4 black peppercorns
1 cup fresh coriander
1 cup fresh parsley
1 x 250ml can tomatillos
1 chilli, seeded and chopped
2 shallots, chopped coarsely
2 lettuce leaves, torn into pieces (although it's worth noting that I didn't notice the influence of the lettuce leaves, and you're probably better off just skipping this ingredient if you don't have any greens in the fridge)
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1/4 cup olive oil

Heat a frying pan over medium heat and toast the pumpkin seeds, turning regularly. It took me about 10 minutes, but it can probably be done in less if you crank the heat up a bit.

Put the toasted pepitas and the peppercorns in a food processor and blend into a coarse powder.

Add everything else except the oil and blend it all together. Throw in the oil and give it a last whizz and voila, you're done.

April 1, 2009: Caramelised onion dip

I've had this recipe poised for use for a few weeks. I originally intended to make it for a beach party but drizzle kept us away from the coast and I repurposed it for a seminar afternoon at work. It's onion dip, but not as I'd seen it before - without the crunchy onion chunks and weird additives of the supermarket stuff, but neither relying on the powdered soup mix of other home recipes. Instead it uses onion powder and features glistening caramelised onions! It does take some patience to slow cook those onions down to sweet golden perfection, but it's a doddle from there.

Heidi (of 101 Cookbooks) has got my snacking predilections down perfectly with this one. The yoghurt-sour cream base is creamy with a little tang while the onions are sweet and savoury. It's actually difficult for me to maintain any sense of decorum when a bowl of this dip and a few crackers are within reach.

Caramelised onion dip
(originally posted by Heidi Swanson at 101 Cookbooks)

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 large onions, finely chopped
3/4 cup sour cream
3/4 cup Greek yoghurt
3 teaspoons onion powder, or to taste
1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste

In a large frypan, gently heat the oil and cook the onions over low heat with a pinch of salt. Stir them occasionally, cooking until the onions are a deep golden brown - this will take at least 40 minutes. Stir them more often as they darken to prevent burning. Take the onions off the heat and allow them to cool (I refrigerated them until the next morning.)

Whisk together the sour cream and yoghurt. Add the onion powder and salt gradually, to taste. Stir through two thirds of the caramelised onions, then sprinkle the rest over the top to serve. Serve the dip at room temperature.

July 1, 2008: Cambridge and York

Since we were staying at a bed and breakfast, Michael started taking advantage of the cooked breakfasts. Here this meant fried eggs, hash browns and baked beans, with a rack of toast on the side. This was all served up by a svelte Swede named Inga. She was impossibly perky, wore hot pink capri pants, and when she noticed our camera on the table she insisted on photographing us together. "Which button? Yes. Now hold her hand. You must hold her hand. Oh, so sweet!" She ensured our day started with a smile and a chuckle, at least.

We continued our train trek to York, and arrived in time for lunch.

Michael picked out Cafe Concerto based on a recommendation in our Lonely Planet guide, and it did us very nicely. (Whoops... don't mind me in the mirror reflection.) It's a casual and comfy cafe that seemed to attract both locals and tourists. Though there were a number of vegetarian items on the menu, most of them seemed to focus on roasted Mediterranean vegetables. (I know it's ungrateful, but I am B.O.R.E.D. of being offered just Med. veges and cheese at restaurants.) The specials board was was much more encouraging, though. Michael munched on a salad and brie baguette, while I had the pate of the day (soft cheese, sun-dried tomato, thyme and pine nuts) in an entree size.

Though the pot of pate wasn't particularly large, the plate was perfectly balanced for a summer lunch. There were several kinds of bread (including a rustic and chunky fruit loaf), a pat of butter and a small salad with grapes. Last Melbourne summer we experimented with a few different dips, and this reminded me what a good lunch habit this could become (particularly when we make legume- rather than cheese-based dips).

Much of the 13th century city walls still stand and they're open for all to walk along. It proved an excellent elevated walkway for us to get a sense of the city, and it's evidently an efficient way for some residents to traverse the city, away from the traffic.

The Gothic York Minster poses a striking figure from almost any direction, and we saved a full exploration of it until the next day.

The central shopping district is surprisingly charming. Though there are a few rows of cheesy souvenirs and the like, even the ordinary retail is conducted from centuries-old shopfronts and cobblestone alleys, frequented by more pedestrians than cars.

The Museum Gardens are pretty, too, of course. I've been stunned again and again by the lurid green lawns and kaleidoscope of flowers, both cultivated and untended, in this country.

We ate dinner at El Piano, a vegan and gluten-free restaurant offering Central American-inspired food (the only infringement in the former case seems to be the option of dairy milk in the hot beverages). The object is to order a number of small dishes and share them around.

This is the moussaka, a potato and eggplant bake with a tomato and fennel sauce, topped with a bechamel-style cream. The vegan cheesy topping was really impressive!

Here's the chilli mince (soya mince with fresh chillies, tomatos, red wine and navy beans) and the Aztec tofu (lightly seared in sunflower oil and Latin spices). Michael was a big fan of the chilli, but the tofu was the dish of the night for both of us. Charred, spicy and with a bit of chew, these reminded me of diced chicken... but better. I think they'd be ideal as part of DIY taco or burrito dinner, and I'm keen to try replicating them at home.

We also ordered corn fritters and a mixed salad dish. Though the freshness of the salad was welcome, it got a bit waterlogged, and it was difficult to pick out and appreciate the individual elements.

Having already seen the dessert menu, I was determined to find room for it. Though I offered to share, Michael was sufficiently keen to order his own - a gooseberry fruit crumble with rice custard. It was soft and shallow, not really meeting expectations.

I was keen to try a vegan cheesecake, especially when I discovered that today's flavour was cherry. It was similarly shallow and lacking a crust (I like a crust on my cheesecake). It was impressively tangy and not at all beany, more like a firm fruit yoghurt than a cheesecake.

The desserts didn't quite win us over, but there was plenty else to appreciate about El Piano. A couple of the savoury dishes were memorable and the young wait staff were all most friendly and efficient.

January 13, 2008: Morsels for the Moonlight Cinema

Between Cindy's network of expat-Brisbanites and my stash of $10 tickets, we rounded up quite a gang for a Sunday evening at the Moonlight Cinema in the botanic gardens. The evening's entertainment consisted of a selection of shorts from the Melbourne International Film Festival, but of course the real focus of the evening was the pre-film picnic. After some success with my previous dip-focussed picnic food, I decided to repeat the performance. This time I flicked through our cookbooks rather than Cindy's bookmarks, and came across a couple of relatively easy and tasty-looking choices.

First up was the amazingly straightforward garlic, herb and bean pate from our CookSmart Vegetarian flip book. This takes all of five minutes to make and is really pretty tasty. I might go a bit lighter on the garlic next time, as it really was a bit overpowering.

Given how simple the first dip was, I decided to be a little more ambitious with the second. This beetroot hummus recipe came from our little Vegie Food cookbook and looked a delicious and bright addition to the relatively plain bean dip. It turned out even pinker than the picture in the book suggested and was worth the extra effort. A word of warning though: this recipe makes an awful lot of dip - we're still working through the leftovers.

We brought along a pile of chopped carrot, cucumber and capsicum as well as some Turkish bread to dig into our dips. Really, between these two dips and Cindy's muffins (coming soon!) there was enough food to feed our whole gang, but of course everyone else had prepared for a picnic as well and we were all stuffed to the gills long before anyone's provisions were exhausted. Better to be safe than hungry I guess. Indeed, by the time the films started, we'd all decided that this picnic idea was a winner, and one we could probably replicate without needing to pay for the privilege.

Still, the films were mostly pretty entertaining, with a couple of odd, slow ones that tested the crowd's patience. Unfortunately the cold drove some of our group away before the last couple of shorts, which were easily the best: Advantage (a ridiculously creepy encounter on a tennis court) and Spider (both disturbing and hilarious, watch it here).


Garlic, herb and bean pate

1 410g can of navy beans (the recipe wanted flageolet beans, but we couldn't find them anywhere), drained
125g quark (the recipe specified cream cheese, but Cindy was keen to buy more quark, and it seemed to work fine as a substitute)
2 garlic cloves, chopped
3 tablespoons pesto (I used some of the leftover agresto)
2 chopped spring onions
salt and pepper

Stick everything in the food processor and whiz until combined. A splash of olive oil probably wouldn't hurt, if the texture is a little dry, but is otherwise unnecessary. And that's it, you've got your first dip.


Beetroot hummus

500g beetroot
1/3 cup olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 tablespoon ground cumin
410g can of chickpeas, drained
1 tablespoon tahini
1/3 cup plain yoghurt
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup vegie stock

Scrub the beetroot and boil in a large pot of water for about 40 minutes, until they're nice and soft. Drain them and let them cool for while and then peel (the skin should come off really easily).

Meanwhile, heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a fry pan and cook the onions for about five minutes. Add in the cumin and stir it through, cooking for another minute or so.

Chop the peeled beetroot into manageable chunks and place it in the food processor with all of your ingredients except for the oil. Whiz everything together until it's a smooth paste. Pour the olive oil in with the processor still whizzing and, once everything is combined, you've got yourself a giant, pink mush ready for dipping.

January 6, 2008: Picnic in the park

After a few ridiculously hot days, Sunday was a mild and pleasant Melbourne summer's day (an aside: I still can't get my head around Melbourne summer - when the temperature can drop 10 degrees in 10 minutes, nothing makes sense anymore) and Cindy and I were inspired to put together some sort of picnic and head off to enjoy the late evening sunshine.

We decided to keep things reasonably healthy (at least pre-dessert): a couple of dips and lots of fresh vegies. I took on dip responsibilities and raided Cindy's bookmarks to find sun-dried tomato hummus and agresto.

The hummus was ridiculously easy to make and was the star of the show - the tahini was noticeable without being overpowering, the few unblended bits of sun-dried tomato provided a bit of texture and the lemon juice gave things a little acidic tang.

The agresto was a little more problematic - there were too many ingredients to fit into our mortar and pestle and I gave up after a little while and reverted to the food processor. Also, I nearly forgot the roasting nuts and things probably tasted a little more charred than it was meant to. We specially purchased verjuice for the recipe, and I must admit that I didn't really notice its impact. Still, it was fine - just a little bit too nutty and too un-basilly for my tastes. I think if I put in half as much parsley, twice as much basil and maybe two-thirds as many nuts I'd be happier with the end results. (Regardless, it worked very well as flavouring in the little pastry treats Cindy and I had for dinner tonight, which I'm guessing will appear on here in the next week or so.)

To cap things off, I packed a thermos full of freshly shaken cosmopolitan. Fantastic.

It should be noted, not only are the Trin Warren Tam-Boore wetlands a fine place for a picnic, there's some pretty good bird-watching to be had as well - I saw my first Australasian Grebe!


Sun-dried tomato hummus
(a recipe from Pinch My Salt)

6-8 sun-dried tomatoes
1 x 400g can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 tablespoon tahini
juice of 1 lemon
4 tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper, to taste
shake of cayenne pepper

Puree everything together in a food processor. Taste, and adjust the flavour balance to your liking.

December 18, 2007: Muhammara

Like Johanna, I recently bought a bottle of pomegranate molasses for the first time. Pomegranate molasses has orbitted my culinary consciousness for quite some time, but for the most part I was content not to own this specialty ingredient. I wasn't convinced that I'd use it much or particularly like the taste. Then I saw Clotilde's recipe for muhammara, a Middle Eastern spread. This mixture of roasted red capsicum and walnuts looked like the star of a few excellent bread-and-dip plates I've ordered out. She suggested that balsamic vinegar, which I already had, would make a suitable substitute but all of a sudden pomegranate molasses had taken on an aura of irreplacability, as if it must be the secret ingredient on those dip platters.

And far from disappointing me, my experimental taste from the bottle confirmed that this was my kind of syrup. Sweet and languidly viscous, but with a very fruity tang. Balsamic vinegar would do, sure, but the molasses fills out the flavour of this spread perfectly to my taste. The dip is sweet and savoury simultaneously, with a texture that's smooth and wholesomely nutty in turn.

We ate the muhammara in wraps with felafel and veges. Its moist sweetness worked well against the sour edge of the packet-mix felafel. A few days later I made a batch of vanilla icecream based on this recipe and tried swirling the pomegranate molasses through. It sunk to the bottom instead of remaining suspended, but the flavours really worked! So pour it on some good vanilla icecream and fruits - we chose blueberries, strawberries and blackberries.

The muhammara recipe is available here.

November 17, 2007: Leftover makeover - dessert pesto II

My first set of chocolate clusters were transformed into a sweet spread and the leftover ingredients from my ginger-cashew clusters received the same treatment. This time I blended the cashews, glace ginger and chocolate with Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese to smooth it out.

The 'pesto' was a success equal to my first attempt and I found some even better biscuits to team it with! These are Arnott's Lattice biscuits, pastry squares that are like sweet glazed SAOs. I haven't had them in years, though I do remember some incredible passionfruit vanilla slices made with them when I was growing up.

May 19, 2007: Dessert Pesto

Here's my new invention on a stay-inside Saturday afternoon - dessert pesto. This is not much more than a blended version of the chocolate clusters I recently made, with a bit of cream cheese to bind it together in a spreadable consistency. It's not quite as chocolatey as it looks: the blended dried cherries also added a rich dark taste, texture and colour. I spread it on plain dry (but slightly sweet) biscuits and was in afternoon tea heaven. It was really just an experimental attempt at using up my last small portions of pistachios and dried cherries, but I can see myself pushing this idea further with other fruit and nut combinations: dried apricot and almond, maybe, or dried apple and cashew with white chocolate...?

Dessert pesto

Throw about 2 dessertspoon-fulls of dried cherries in a blender and pulse until mushy. Add an equal volume of pistachios and pulse briefly to break them up a bit. Next add about 20g of dark cooking chocolate and pulse again. Finally, add 1 dessertspoon-full of cream cheese and pulse until just combined. Transfer to a small serving dish and enjoy with plain biscuits.

August 24, 2006: Catering for Carol

We arranged to have Carol over for dinner on this night, to thank her for her generosity during our first couple of weeks in Melbourne. During our time in her house, we noticed her smallish appetite and addiction to avocado and crackers before dinner. Thus we decided to prepare a few rounds of nibbly food instead of an elaborate main meal. During the day Michael made pesto and dukkah in his prized mortar and pestle. (Dukkah is a Middle Eastern spice mix, best mopped up using toasted Turkish bread dipped in olive oil.)

(The recipes are included at the end of the post.) Carol arrived with the un-yuppie contributions of Cheezels and Snack chocolate, and I demolished about two thirds of the Cheezels before I even looked at Michael’s earthy gourmet creations. (Despite the overall tone of this blog, I’m not much of a food snob. My most craved food is probably chips.)

Our after-thought of a main course was an encore performance of the marinated tofu, this time with ginger in the marinade, with some carrots, bok choy and a wedge of lemon on the side.

The original dessert plan was to visit Koko Black, but it was a dreary cold evening and we picked up some treats from Brunetti before Carol arrived instead.

I carefully cut the cherry almond tart and sticky date pudding into thirds, unsure of how to deal with the chocolate cannoli. The sticky data pudding was unusually encased in shortcrust pastry, with a dense date-and-walnut centre and sticky sweet caramel topping. The cherry tart had more shortcrust pastry, an almond meal filling that tasted distinctly of amaretto, a layer of custard, and a few sour cherries and flaked almonds on the top. At this point the dilemma of how to neatly divide the cannoli was superseded by the dilemma of how to fit them into our full stomaches. The solution was to wrap up one cannoli and send it home with Carol, while stashing the other one in the fridge.

Pesto
(we adapted this from Diana’s kitchen. Her recipe has more garlic and uses a food processor instead of a mortar and pestle.)

Ingredients:
2 cups fresh basil leaves, packed
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/2 cup olive oil
3 tablespoons pine nuts
2 garlic cloves, finely minced

Pummel the basil in the mortar until it’s mushy. Add about a 1/3 of the pine nuts and a clove of garlic and pummel some more. Add about a 1/3 of the parmesan cheese, pummel, and drizzle in some of the olive oil. Repeat with the remaining ingredients, and don’t use all of the oil if you’re happy with the consistency. (Extra oil probably helps preserve the pesto if you’re not going to use it all straight away.) Reduce the garlic further if you want to interact with anyone else for the next 24 hours.

Diana says, “Basil pesto keeps in refrigerator one week, or freeze for a few months.”

Dukkah
(This recipe is copied directly from the Australian magazine, January 28-29 2006)

Ingredients:

65g sesame seeds
30g coriander seeds
15g hazelnuts
2 teaspoons ground cumin
sea salt, to taste

Roast the seeds, nuts and cumin separately in a small dry frying pan over a low heat until fragrant. Don’t let them become too dark. Pound everything together in a mortar and pestle until finely crushed but not pulverised. Mixture should be dry rather than a paste. Season to taste with salt then store in an airtight container until required. Serve with warm fried tortillas or warm pita bread.

Tip: dukkah is also lovely on roasted or grilled vegetables or warm wilted spinach.