Stop! Hummu-time!

Slowly catching up to where I'm at with my cooking, woohoo! In the month of April I thought I was going to be great. I had all these good intentions. The first thing I made was Hummus, out of my Vitamix cookbook. It was only a couple days into the month....and then I didn't make anything else! Sooo, that's no good...but back to the hummus. It was okay, I have heard people have better luck with the roasted red pepper hummus. Also I might not have had really tasty olive oil. This was made for our all day gaming party, so I did not get the chance to take a nicer picture.

Hummus

2 15oz cans chickpeas, one drained, one with liquid
1/4 cup raw sesame seeds
1 tbs olive oil
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup water
1 garlic clove, peeled
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp salt

Place all ingredients into blender in the order listed. Put on your lid folks!

Start blender at lowest speed and slowly turn it up to about 80% power.

Blend for about 30 seconds.

Now that was nice and easy, wasn't it? It should work just fine with any blender, some will manage to make it a super smooth texture. One thing I did notice for sure was that the consistency wasn't was thick as I wanted it until I put it in the fridge and let it chill for a bit. Kind of makes sense, since that's how you buy hummus!

Mushrooms are vegetables with high morel standing.

I'm still here! Just not terribly good at updates. So go bad to a kingdom far far away about two months ago(March)....and I made Christmas Dried Mushroom Soup out of my Classic Polish Recipes book. Fair warning, it looks kind of funny! (At least I think so.) It did turn out tasty though :)

Christmas Dried Mushroom Soup

2 cups dries mushrooms
2 1/2 cups water, plus 6 cups water (keep separate)
1 large onion, diced
1 large shallot, diced
1 leek, thinly sliced
2 carrots
3 stalks of celery with leaves
3/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp white pepper (I still just used black)
1 tbs flour
2 tbs butter
3 tbs cold water
1 tbs vinegar
1/2 sour cream
1 tbs butter
1 tbs chopped fresh dill leaves, or 1 tsp dries

Soak the dried mushrooms in 2 1/2 cups of water for 2 hours. Strain the mushrooms through a fine strainer or cheese cloth to remove any sand, reserving the liquid for the soup. Chop the mushrooms finely. Put the mushrooms, reserved mushrooms liquid and the 6 cups of water in a large soup pot. Add the onion, shallot and leeks. Bring the mixture to a boil, cover and simmer for 30 minutes.

Add the carrods and celery. Season the soup with salt and pepper, cover and simmer for 30 more minutes. Remove the carrots and celery from the soup, press lightly over the pot to extract all the juices, and discard. Strain the mushrooms, onion, shallots and leeks from the soup and finely chop. Return the chopped mix to the soup broth.

In a saute pan, melt the butter and add the flour to make a roux. Heat for 3 to 5 minutes while constantly stirring until it turns to a rich amber color. Add 3 tablespoons of cold water and continue stirring until the mixture is thickened and smooth. Add the roux to the soup. Add the vinegar. Adjust the seasonings. Mix in the sour cream, butter and dill. Serve hot.

The steps to this are not your typical kitchen practices! I got the mushrooms from Williams-Sonoma of course, but I know you can find them in some grocery stores. Taking out the carrots and celery and tossing them? Kind of weird, but I'm sure it helped to flavor the broth. You can't really "press them" very well to 'extract juices"...they pretty just were a big bunch of mush! If you have a cutting board with a moat in it, I would highly recommend it for when you chop up the cooked mushrooms, onions and such. Even after straining everything there will still plenty of juices, and you definitely don't want to lose them. The only other part that threw me off was adding the sour cream. It ended up looking not as smooth as I wanted. Maybe I added it when everything was still too hot? I'm not sure. You could also try to temper it a little by adding some of the broth to the sour cream before putting all of it in the soup. That could make a difference! The one thing I let out was the dill...I'm really not a fan of it, so it doesn't even exist in my kitchen.

All in all, a fun one to try, and a different taste than I have ever had. It's got a little bite to it with the sour cream and vinegar!