Pizza Hummus

I'm in the middle of thinking about cleaning out my pantry.

I tend to have great epiphanies in the grocery store and I end up purchasing canned vegetables that I just KNOW I will use within the next week because I have all these amazing recipe ideas that I want to try out.

Now let's fast forward to about 10 months later, when that same can of garbanzo beans is still staring me in the face. Hmmmm...why did I buy this again?

Interestingly enough, I was browsing my old Food Network magazines the other day (no power in the aftermath of Sandy means you look through a lot of magazines) when I stumbled upon a writeup for three variations of hummus.  Jackpot!  Though I do love hummus, there are just so many other snacks out there that I want to try.  I also want to blog and share those recipes with you.  Truth.  I honestly could only get away with blogging about plain old regular hummus once.  Once and that's it.  Let that bad boy go.  So you can see why I was so excited to find other hummus options.

I had a really hard time picking between the three recipes, but I ended up choosing the pizza-flavored dip since everyone loves pizza.  By everyone, I mean me.  I won't tell you about the other hummus flavors just yet, because I want to make and blog about them later.  It's a surprise!

Pizza Hummus

from Food Network magazine

makes 4 cups

Print Recipe

• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/4 cup tomato paste
• 2 teaspoons dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon dried basil
• 2-3 cloves garlic
• 3 cups canned chickpeas, drained and rinsed, 1/2 cup liquid reserved
• 1/4 cup tahini
• 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 - 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)

1) Heat the olive oil in a small pan over medium-high heat. Add the tomato paste, oregano and basil to the pan and saute until slightly toasted, about 2 minutes.

2) Place the tomato paste mixture into a food processor.  Put the garlic, chickpeas, tahini, lemon juice, salt, and cayenne pepper into the processor as well. 

3) Puree until smooth and creamy, adding more liquid and/or salt if necessary.

I admit that I wasn't a huge fan of this the day I made it.  The tomato paste flavor was a bit too strong for me.  However....the next day, this hummus had transformed itself into the bomb diggy!  The tomato paste had mellowed out and one whiff of the basil and oregano spices immediately transported me into a New York pizzeria.  I'm into that.

I pretty much inhaled half of it all by myself.  Yup, it was all mine! Oh wait, I'm supposed to share this as an appetizer? Whoops.  I think I'd better make some more.