Roasted Garlic and Rosemary Hummus

(Haz clic aquí para español)

Take advantage of your left-over garbanzo beans from the previous recipe and enjoy this variation on a classic for those days when you’re feeling lazy but -damn- you need to make a good impression. This is a quick and versatile recipe with its own personal touch, smokey and leafy thanks to the roasted garlic and fresh rosemary. 

I even left the prices on so you could budget 🙂

This is what your roast garlic should look like

A representative rosemary sample (use more!)

You’ll need the following:

• 3 or 4 cloves of garlic
• 3 cups of cooked garbanzo beans
• 1/2 cup of tahini (sesame paste) or to taste
• 2 lemons or limes
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• a handful of rosemary, finely chopped
• salt to taste

1. Place the garlic cloves on a piece of tin foil together with a drizzling of olive oil and ball it up loosely. Place your tinfoil ball, garlic and oil into the oven, pre-heated to 200 C (400 F) for 15 minutes – but pay attention so that it doesn’t burn!
2. In the meantime, slice the limes or lemons and finely chop the rosemary.
3. Remove the garlic from the oven and while it cools, begin to place the ingredients in a blender. Here you’ve got two options: you can either dump everything into the machine at once, like I did, or you can blend the hummus bit by bit, which is what I’d recommend (unless you have an industrial blender). With either of these two options, add water little by little so that the mix remains smooth but not silky- what you don’t want is for the hummus to end up thin and liquidy. Hummus relies on its texture, so it’s better for it to be thick with some un-blended garbanzo beans in the mix, than to end up like baby food.
4. Once everything has been blended, throw it in a bowl and there you go: ready to eat with pita bread or with sliced carrot, celery or cucumber, or to be used with other future recipes…You can decorate it with rosemary and a pinch of paprika to improve the presentation if you like. Enjoy!
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