For months I had dried chickpeas in the house.  For months I’ve been intending to make hummus.  I have a little grandson who loves hummus.  It’s one of those things for me, that even though I knew it was simple, I felt intimidated.  Well, yesterday, I jumped in with both feet. 

The hummus was a snap, until I realized I didn’t have any of the tahini sauce in the house that all hummus recipes called for.  Tahini sauce?  I had never heard of it.  So, off I went into the land of the interwebs to find out what tahini sauce was.  At first all I could find was that tahini sauce was very expensive and some people substituted peanut butter.  Ummmm.  Too easy. So I searched ‘homemade tahini’ and BAM!, there it was.  It was so amazingly simple.  Off I went to get my sesame seeds.  I made two cups of tahini sauce for about $3 which was just enough to put into my 8 cups of hummus.

Hummus:

Soak 4 cups of sorted rinsed dried chickpeas over night.  Drain, cover in clean water. Gently simmer chickpeas until nice and soft.  Drain.  Let cool a bit.  Put in food processor with two tbsp garlic, 1 tsp paprika, 1 tsp salt, 3 tbsp olive oil (to start).  Process on high stopping to scrap sides frequently.  You can add more olive oil if you need to if it’s too thick.

Tahini

2 cups sesame seeds, toast them gently without burning either in the oven or in a heavy fry pan, I bought mine already toasted.  Put the seeds in your food processor.  Process on high adding olive oil until you get a nice consistency.

Mix tahini into the hummus.  Done.

naan in my cast iron pan

Some very nice friends recommended I needed to have naan bread to go with this hummus.  They were right.  I have now learned to make homemade hummus and naan.  It’s been a good week.

naan, chickpeas and hummus