Houmous with spices, sweet potato and butternut

Steps

• Before starting working with spices :
  • Preheat the oven at 180°C
  • Wash and peel the veggies (butternut & sweet potato) with a peeler because knifes can be dangerous

for the spices

• Add all spices, except cinnamon and paprika, in a mortar
• Stir everything together with a teaspoon
• Heat-up a pan
• Once the pan is hot, add the spices and the cinnamon but keep aside paprika for later use
• Stir continuously with a wooden spoon
• Once spices start to jump, especially the mustard seeds, remove them from heat
• Let them cool a little
• Add the paprika into the mortar and the rest of the spices
• Crash everything gently together and you will see that the cinnamon stick will stay in pieces
• Add 1 teaspoon of olive oil
• Add salt and pepper
• Press everything together into the mortar until a kind of paste is formed

for the veggies

• Dice the butternut into cubes of 2cm
• Dice the sweet potato into cubes of 2cm a well
• Add the veggies into a pan going to the oven
• Place the paste of spices on top of the veggies
• Use your hand to cover up the veggies with spices
• Place the pan into the oven and cook for 30’
• Get the veggies out of the oven and let them cool a little bit

to bring everything together

• Drain the chickpeas you found into a jar
• Place them under fresh water and wash them until the foam disappears
• Add the chickpeas into an electric vegetable chopper or a blender
• Once the veggies are a bit cold, add them into the chopper along with the olive oil
• Turn on the chopper and start chopping; from time to time you will need to push down the veggies and the chickpeas, near the chopper’s knife, because they tend to stay up
• Pour some lemon juice (not much for starters) and the tahini sauce and start chopping again
• Taste the houmous and add some fleur de sel (or coarse salt) along with some lemon juice (if needed)
• Start chopping again and you will see that the texture will remain somehow rough because there is not much oil; stop chopping once you are pleased with the texture
• Taste!!! It’s simple delicious and so light in terms of fat because chickpeas are somehow quite heave as food :-) but so good :-)
• :-)

What’s the story behind this recipe?

There was a period that I used to eat a lot of leguminous food because I had to eat in great quantity in order to feel full and not be hungry, so leguminous food was bringing me comfort and I was not hungry no more! During that period I came across houmous and I really liked it so I used to make classic houmous quite often, but I was not using a lot of oil as in this recipe, because as you might have realized oil and butter make me fat almost instantly, so since all these years that I am counting and using less fat (to be precise since 2004) the fat today disgust me completely!!! Certainly this houmous is less smooth than the usual houmous we see everywhere but my God how good it is!!! 

You can taste this houmous during the French ritual called aperitif, on a little bit of bread or on some crackers (maybe it’s better) or you can just eat it with a teaspoon to avoid the starchy food. Otherwise, you can use it as a side-dish along with some meat or meatballs :-)

Your turn to play :)

Inspiration

This recipe came to me after watching this video of the British Chef Gordon Ramsay where he presents various vegetarian recipes that are also very interesting, especially his focaccia :) The houmous part starts just after the 9^th minute :)

(*) if you do not find jar chickpeas in stores or if you prefer to prepare them yourself,you need to dip the chickpeas into cold water for a night, and then boil them into plain water without any salt; good luck :-)