First I must credit Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, one of the TV chefs I actually admire, as the inspiration for this recipe. You know him, he's the one with the scruffy hair, goggly stare, big specs - an intense almost evangelical approach to cooking and food. He's usually broadcasting outdoors from a muddy river bank or in a screaming rainy gale in the wilds of the Herefordshire countryside, wielding a wild mushroom and telling the viewers how to cook it with an even wilder squirrel!
No, stupid! Not the lovely late lamented "lets have a slurp" Keith Floyd, the poor chap died years ago, sadly; drunk and skint, but at least he had lived, rather too much I fear, RIP Keith!
My recipe has a more intense and distinctly Mediterranean feel about it than HFW's and NO bread in it. If you want bread, eat this dip with delicious home-made pitta bread!
Beetroot Hummus
Take a close look at the breakfast table in the picture, just above the croissants, you'll see a little white bowl and in it a "cyan" coloured dip. Voila! Beetroot Hummus! It looks a bit lurid, but the flavour ...... yummy!
There's a funny story related to this picture. It was taken illustrate the brunch offering in my guest apartment - look at www.ibizahomestay.com for more details (not yet though, I still need to revise it for 2014) well, you can if you like, but some of the text is out of date. I'll be keeping the 2014 tariff the same as 2013.
On with the tale. A group of lovely Swedish girls came to visit and wanted a vegetarian brunch. This is a picture of what I made for them. Later that day I was having friends round and making a chicken and leek pie for them. As the smell of it reached the terrace, the girls wanted to know what I was cooking, so I told them - "Ooh, its smells so good" they said, "could we just have a little taste of the leeks and cheese Bechamel, please?" No problem. Then one of them scooped a bit of chicken up with her taste, by accident. "Mmmm, that's meat!" she said, "but not so bad!" Then the rest of them dived in, liked it, started to giggle (by the way, there were no special Ibiza ingredients in it) and went off into a huddle. So when I asked them what was making them laugh, they said "we have decided that from now on Chicken is officially a Swedish vegetable!"
Beetroot and Walnut Hummus
Ingredients
100g walnuts
1 tbsp cumin seeds
200g roasted beetroot coarsely chopped
1 tbsp tahini or more, to taste
1 large garlic clove, crushed
Juice of one, or more lemons, to taste
sea salt, to taste
freshly ground black pepper, to taste
olive oil
Method
Preheat the oven to 180C
Wash the beetroot well to clean off any soil, do not peel or
cut off anything other than a straggly root and the foliage, then rub well with
olive oil, wrap in aluminium foil and roast at 180C on a middle shelf until tender.
Usually about 45 minutes to an hour.
Allow the beetroots to cool, then peel and coarsely chop them
SauteƩ the walnuts, stirring constantly, in a
little olive oil in a heavy frying pan until they begin toast lightly and release their lovely
aroma. Take care they burn very
easily
Toast the cumin for a few seconds in a hot pan then grind it, finely, in a pestle and mortar or spice grinder
Transfer the ground cumin, beetroot, tahini,
garlic, half the lemon juice, a little salt and a grind or two of pepper to a
food processor and blend to a thick paste.
Taste the mixture and season it to your own
taste with salt, pepper, more lemon juice and olive oil.
Eat
with homemade, thin, warm pitta bread
End Note
Do not feed any leftovers to "Rover" or "Fido." 'Cos when you take him out for his early morning "business meeting" you may be inclined to rush him straight to the vet :-) You have been warned!