Curried Edamame Hummus

Hummus, so hard to come by in Japan in general, in our island in particular. Today however, we adapted a recipe found online and made our own version of delicious edamame hummus. This is our "recipe" :)



Makes about 2 cups worth of hummus

Ingredients:

Edamame, 2 bags of unshelled (or about 1 1/2 cups shelled)
Garlic, 2 cloves, cut up into chunks (will get blended anyway)
Onion, 1 small, cut up into chunks
Curry powder, 1 level teaspoon
Red chile powder, 3/4 teaspoon
Garam masala, about 1 to 2 teaspoons
Dried herbs, oregano, basil, parsley, etc.; a nice sprinkle of each
Salt, a few pinches
1 lemon
Tahini paste, i.e. ねりごま(練り胡麻) sesame paste in Japanese, about 2 to 3 tablespoons
olive oil, quite a bit

If you bought unshelled frozen edamame, place them all in a large pot with water and put on a medium flame for about 3 to 5 minutes. They don't need to be hot, just soft. Now squeeze out the beans from the inside into a collander (big strainy thing you use to rinse pasta and stuff). You'll need about 1 1/2 cups of edamame beans. Rinse them off, set aside.

In a fry pan, add a nice amount of olive oil, the garlic, and the onion. Turn up the heat to medium and cook for a bit. Once the onions and garlic cook a bit, add the curry powder, chile powder, garam masala, dried herbs, and salt. Let everything fry for a bit, but don't burn it, about 3 minutes. Turn off the heat and let it sit there.

Meanwhile, in a blender, pour about 3 tablespoons olive oil along with the juice of 1/2 of the fresh lemon (use a small strainer to avoid seeds getting in). Blend for about 20 seconds until the oil and lemon juice whip together into a nice froth.

Now add the contents of the fry pan to the blender and blend again until smooth. Now for the tricky part, making the hummus in batches.

Add about half of the edamame, the sesame paste, and about 1 or 2 tablesppons olive oil. Blend. It will be chunky.

To get it less chunky, blend for a bit, turn off, then remove the top, press everything down with a spoon, then blend again. Keep doing this. Be sure not to put too much edamame into the blender or else it'll be very difficult to blend everything.

Once this batch is smooth(ish), remove what you can with a spoon and place in a large bowl. Don't worry about getting everything out quite yet.

Now add the rest of the edamame, the rest of the lemon juice, and some more olive oil (a couple tablespoons worth). Blend like above, pressing down, reblending, etc. Once the mixture is smooth, scoop the blender contents into the bowl and mix the two (or three or four) batches until well incorporated.

To get all the hummus out of the blender, unscrew the bottom of the blender, hold the now open bottom part over the bowl. Push out all the hummus stuck to the sides of the blender down with a spoon so it all falls into the big bowl. Mix everything well. Enjoy the hell out of this tasty ass hummus! Serve with chips or whatever else suits your fancy. We spread the dip on crackers, sprinkled some black pepper, and added a dash of tabasco. Yum!

Note: The blender I used is pretty nice, hence it didn't break when trying to make hummus. I wouldn't even try making hummus in a smaller blender (like the ones they sell for making smoothies). I'm pretty sure it'll break, as I broke my friend's trying to make mole, so I can't imagine it processing hummus. If you have a food processor however, you can skip making the hummus in batches and just throw everything in all together, lucky you.