Going green: leafy humus

Now, can Annalena have a show of hands:   how many of you have had a  try at making humus:  hands up please..

Ok, good.  Now, let's keep those hands up, if you made it starting with dried  chickpeas instead of the canned stuff.


Hmmmm.  Good number of you.  Annalena is impressed.  NOW... How many of you have ever wondered how much or what you could stick into the stuff and still make it taste good?

Ok, well, we're going to get to that topic today here, ragazzi.  This is a delicious, easy thing to make, and it does answer the question:  what do I do with the leftover greens?

Of course, it presupposes that you have cooked chickpeas in the house.  Annalena encourages all of you to keep a ready supply of cooked legumes at all times.  You can freeze them, and they freeze well.  But not all of us will have the chickpeas handy  if we do cook the beans, and frankly, let us be honest:  not many of us are going to start from scratch and make them.  If you do, however, you will be rewarded with a final product that is much better than you could get if you worked with the canned stuff.

So, Annalena is going to take you through a "from scratch" recipe, and if you do want to use the canned stuff, well, you know where to start.  And if you don't, Annalena, as is her wont, will tell you.


You start with half a pound of dried chickpeas.  Cover them in a LOT of water, and let them sit, overnight, to rehydrate some.

The next day, change the water (always important with dried beans), and add new water to cover them to about an inch and a half to two inches.  Bring the pot to a boil, and then reduce to a gentle simmer, and go read a book.  The chickpeas are going to take about an  hour and a half, two hours, to cook.  Taste them after about an hour and a quarter.  If they feel like they are just about done, add a few teaspoons of salt.  If not, keep tasting every fifteen minutes, and add the salt when you're getting  there.  When they are soft enough for you (usually, this means that if you press a cooled one against the roof of your mouth with your tongue, it falls apart), let them cook in their water, because you want them to cook a little further. Soft is better here.  When cool, drain them, but keep about a cup of the water, because you'll need it.

Now, to the greens.  Annalena had leftover spigariello broccoli.  This is sometimes called "leaf broccoli" for a reason:





Doesn't look like regular broccoli, does it?  In fact, there are almost no florets, and no thick stems.  So you cook it like a hearty green (kale, swiss chard, etc).  Annalena gets hers from the Farmers Market (of course she does), but if you want to do this recipe, and don't have access to spigariello, use your favorite green. Cook it as if you were serving it as a vegetable, and then take two cups of the cooked stuff.  Let it cool.


Now, we pull out our blender.  We also get 3 good sized cloves of garlic, peel em and smash them.  Put them in the blender with the chickpeas, and the water, and get it pureeing.  You may find that you need to add more liquid, and if so, start by adding olive oil - about a quarter of a cup.  If you still need liquid, now add water.  Finally, put those greens in, and just puree it until it's smooth, but still has some texture to it.  Taste it, and adjust for salt, or olive oil.

This will thicken when it cools, so keep that in mind when you're adding your liquid.  If you do decide to use the canned beans, you will want two cans of them, and drain their liquid and wash them.    Then you can move directly to the blender stage.

This is very nice this time of year.  Sometimes, you just want a tasty bit of something like this.  Y'all know what I mean.  So, make it. And tell us what green went into your version.   C'mon people,  get to the kitchen