Lebanese Recipes - Avocado Hummus

Hello everyone! Welcome to Lebanese Taverna, my name is Mohammad. I am from Afghanistan. I moved to US in late `98 and since then I have been working in Lebanese Taverna. At Lebanese Taverna market we do a lot of catering, we have grocery daily up stairs and we do also cooking classes.

Today we are making some of our wonderful easy dishes, they are really healthy. If I can do it, you guys can do it. For instance, we are making Avocado Hummus, the Fatouche salad as well, and Lamb Loin with Three Herb Sauce. So let s go and start.

Before we make the Avocado Hummus, I am going to tell you guys how to make the plain hummus. For that you need to cook chickpeas, we normally use dry chickpeas and soak them overnight with baking soda. Baking soda helps to cook faster, so soak it overnight with baking soda. The next day you wash the chickpeas, put in a pot covered with water, add another teaspoon of baking soda, and then bring it to boil.

After boiling, let us simmer for good one hour. You want to make sure it s overcooked, mushy, then turn it off, let it cool down, put the chickpeas in the fridge. So when you prepare your hummus it s cold and chill. You see, as it s overcooked, and you need Tahini, this is one of your other main ingredient. For two cups of chickpeas you need one pound of tahini and this brand is really good. Before you use, shake it really good, you never keep this one in the fridge, always stays at room temperature on the shelf, every two weeks, every one week, just mix it really good. It won t go bad, it has a long shelf life, good, six months to one year.

Then you need fresh squeezed lemon juice also, garlic, salt. Now, once you put the chickpeas here, you put tahini and you puree, you add the garlic, puree, taste it several times, add the lemon juice. Taste it several times to make sure you got the right flavor. Then you can avocado, this is to give it more flavor. Avocado also has more vitamins and it s really rich on protein, so it makes it really healthy and also nice flavor.

At here I am going to add, this is how you peel the avocado. So here I am going to peel it a little bit more, most of the people, it s really hard for them to peel. All we have to do is cut avocado in half; this is the other half, I am going to show you how to take the seed out. If you know martial arts, you do like this, you can take it out. You see, and if you can have this way, easily peel it. You add everything in the food processor here, keep this one too. If you want to make sure, add little bit more lemon juice, this is fresh squeezed lemon juice, with the pulp. You get very nice flavor and put the lid on and we are going to puree. It changes the color, it gets greener and makes it really nice healthier also.

See that, the color is changing, it changed more like greenish. Now it s called avocado hummus, I add a little bit more lemon to protect the color, it won t turn brown or anything like that and what you need is -- let me put this in the trash. You need a white bowl here.

Make a nice plate of avocado hummus. The longer you puree the smother it gets, but this is pretty smooth right now. You see it? Always you put some extra virgin olive oil on the top. This is always good to eat extra virgin olive oil raw, for dips or salad. If you want you can put some paprika to garnish and some chopped parsley. You can serve this with the pita bread, pita chips or vegetables, carrots anything like that. Okay? Here we go.