Erica's Recession Hummus

It's the most wonderful, and shocking, time of the year where Erica posts one of her own recipes: Recession Hummus.

The Great Recession has made a big impact on the way I purchase and consume hummus. Sabra is my personal grocery store pre-made hummus favorite, with their offbeat but delicious flavor combos. But, at $4+ per container, it's just not worth it. I'm going to tell you how I sucked it up, bought a $6 jar of tahini (which will, no joke, probably last you 50+ batches of hummus!), and rocked my own hummus flavors at a deep discount.

This is one of those recipes where you can use whatever is in your refrigerator that you feel would be delicious in hummus. Rather than give you exact quantities, you should just use the quantity of each ingredient that:

1) Makes the hummus taste good

and

2) Creates the typical consistency of hummus

You can be creative here, but I chose to use the following:

1/2 cup of sundried tomatoes (if you don't use sundried tomatoes, you can use olives, hot peppers, roasted red peppers, etc. If the ingredient that you add is not inherently salty, add salt to taste)

1 small can of chick peas ($.99)

1 tablespoon of tahini (or more if you like the taste)

1 garlic clove

Lemon juice to taste

Water to the appropriate consistency (add small pours at a time!)

Black pepper to taste

About 1 tbsp olive oil (trying to keep it light, but you can add more if you aren't concerned about fat content...)

Throw all of the ingredients into a food processor or blender. If the hummus is too thick, add a tiny bit of water (but not too much - no one likes runny hummus!)

The total cost of this hummus is waaaaay less than $4 -- especially if you have most of this stuff already in your house. A small lemon juice is about a dollar and will last for many, many batches!

Enjoy!

Asian-Italian Fusion Dumplings

After a few months of staring at each other, going to bed at 8:30, spending too much money at bars, actually going to the gym, whittling our own furniture, and (gasp!) reading, John and I broke down and ordered basic cable from Comcast. Trust me, if Rabbit Ears still worked for the TV, we'd use them. You know how they said that the over-75 set was throwing a fit at the digital switch? Well... let's just say we weren't too happy about it either.

So, when you only have 13 channels in English (I won't count Telemundo unless I go out and get some Berlitz Tapes, but I do love me some Rai every one and a while since I can actually understand it) PBS becomes more of a choice thing to watch. Ming Tsai the friggin' genius owner of Blue Ginger (The. Best. Restaurant. Ever. GO THERE!) has a show on PBS called Simply Ming, where he cooks with a guest and serves up some delish East Meets West cuisine. A few episodes ago he had the most important guest of all -- his mom -- and they made some amazing looking shaomai and other Asian dumplings.

In an East Meets West moment, John and I cooked up some Italian sausage-stuffed dumplings for some guests that came over this weekend. Here's how:

Round won-ton wrappers (makes little more than 1 package- we froze the rest)

4 Hot Italian sausages (take casing off)

Red Pepper (1/2)

Taiwan cabbage (1 head)

Carrots (1 medium)

Scallions (1 bunch - white part only)

Celery (1-2 stalks)

Ginger (fresh, 2 tbsp. diced)

3 Cloves garlic (diced)

Chicken stock (1/4 cup)

Soy sauce (1/4 cup)

Sesame oil (drizzle)

Dipping Sauce

Soy sauce (1/2 cup)

Rice wine vinegar (1/2 cup)

Sesame oil (drizzle)

Sriracha sauce (a few drops depending on how much you like spice)

Cook the sausage first and drain it (break it up into little pieces). Then add the vegetables (sliced and diced into very small pieces) and sauces and cook it down until everything's soft.

The hard part is stuffing these things - it takes forever. Of course, I did this part. If you have a round Won Ton wrapper, dip your finger in a bowl of water and trace the edge of the dumpling with your finger so it creates an adhesive. Put the stuffing in the middle (not too much) and fold in half. Then stick the two ends together if you're feeling saucy. We steamed these dumplings in a bamboo steamer, but you can pan-fry them as well in a little oil.

Speaking of sauce, in a small bowl mix the ingredients for the dipping sauce. It's the best part!

These things disappeared faster than a Masshole when he hits your parked car (No, that's never happened to me.)

Questions? Comments? Concerns?