On Wednesday, Sobbuh me a new assignment - it was time to re-shoot all the labels on our bean cans for Persia Foods. My job was to shoot just about every bean varietal there is - chickpeas, kidney beans, black beans, fava beans, lima beans, and cannellini beans. Sounds like a line out of Forrest Gump, I know. I was going to be up in my ears in beans. I generally follow a vegetarian diet so it was a good chance to experiment with new recipes, but the sheer volume was intimidating. Not to mention, I already had pimento and chickpeas soaking at home from the night before... what ensued this Friday was like a factory production line of bean cookery. My entire fridge is packed with stews, baked beans and dips, and I've been making care packages to my neighbours with these. It was a good chance to tweak and improve some previous recipes - the first being hummus. 

I had following all the "proper" ways for making hummus - soaking the beans from dried, only adding in oil at the end, roasting the garlic first. But I still found the flavour bland. I don't know if that's true for any of you, but I decided to quit making plain hummus at this point. There were some leftover sundried tomatoes in the fridge - with the addition of paprika, this batch turned out beautifully! 

Sobbuh gave me another tip - add baking soda to the water when boiling the beans. It worked amazingly well - within ten or fifteen minutes, the beans were cooked. I couldn't believe it - they were actually almost overcooked because I didn't expect it to work so fast. Anyway, without further ado, here is the recipe! 

Everything listed here is to taste, so keep tasting it as you go to make sure it's on the right path! 

Ingredients

3 cups chickpeas, canned or cooked from scratch
3 tablespoons tahini
3 garlic cloves
2-3 tablespoons olive oil
1.5 tablespoons sundried tomato
salt & pepper to taste
1/2 cup water
2 lemons, juiced
zest of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon paprika

Blend garlic on its own in the blender. Add chickpeas, lemon juice, lemon zest, tahini, sundried tomato, paprika with 1/4 cup water to blender and blend. Add salt and pepper to taste. Finally, add olive oil to taste.