Garlicky Joy

There is no such thing as too much garlic.

This was my mantra until my college roomate and I, both devout garlic lovers, once put 10 cloves of fresh garlic into a hummus recipe. Apparantly, we had managed to find the most pungent and strong garlic in the world, and we managed to render the hummus nearly inedible. I have since then, learned balance, and how not to make the same mistakes of my youth. Its funny, I haven't had hummus in ages, it wasn't until I smelled the garlic hummus of one of the instructors at my trapeze school (yes, that's right, trapeze school... its my plan B when being a corporate attorney doesn't work out). It's something that I refused to buy at the grocery store because well, $5 for a tiny tub of hummus always seemed wrong. Even though I now am well into my illustrious career and can very well afford to spend $5 for a tiny tub of hummus, I'm cheap. I refuse to buy it on sheer principle more than anything. Oh yea, so trapeze school instructor lady was eating carrot sticks with $5 per tub hummus. It smelled good. And then I couldn't stop thinking about it. So, by accident, because I take trapeze classes, I created perfect Garlic Chili Hummus. Perfectly creamy, smooth, with a staying garlic power. Garlic that sticks to you. Literally. Which finishes with a tiny kick.

Hummus is one of those foods that is really worth making yourself, because its easy to whip up small batches. Its also really addictive, which is why I have to make small batches or else you would find me on the floor of my office in a hummus coma. The major investment in hummus is actually the tahini, a sesame paste reminiscent of natural peanut butter. For $5 or $6, however, you get about a pint, which will stay indefinitely good in the fridge, and can be used little-by-little in baba ganoush and hummus adventures. It'll probably take me a year or two to go through mine.

Perfectly creamy hummus has eluded me for years until I had a rare moment of boredom. I had about 30 minutes to spare while waiting to go pick up my share of fruits and veggies from my Dragonfly Farms CSA (check 'em out at http://www.dffarms.com/). I decided to make some hummus... except this time, I decided to take the extra time to run hot water over my garbanzo beans and pick off all of the little skins on them. Mostly because I needed to bust some time and it was better than the alternative of mopping the floor. It took all of 5 minutes to do one can of garbanzo beans. Then I threw the deskinned garbanzo beans in with the juice of 1 lemon, 1 TBSP olive oil, 1 TBSP minced garlic, 1 heaping tsp chinese garlic chili paste, salt and cracked pepper, and 1 heaping TBSP tahini into a blender. Hmm. It whirred and then stuck. So I added about 1/4 cup of water to thin it out just enough for the blender to do its thang. The result? A beautifully smooth blender full of garlicky joy. I could have eaten it all right there.

Post-discovery of the secret to smooth hummus, I did a quick search online to see what the interwebs had to say about garbanzo bean skins. Hrm, apparantly this is common knowledge that taking the skins off garbanzo beans is the magical secret. Pshooo.