Humous (Be Joking?)

As these two things are not made with chick peas can they really qualify as humous (hummus, hummous and probably several other acceptable spellings)? Hence the pathetic play on words of the title. It does sound better than vegetable spread, though, an unromantic if more accurate name.

As so often the inspiration for these comes from the most excellent HF-W, whose books I return to regularly.

With a glut of broad beans to deal with on our return from hols - you can only freeze so many - I made a batch of something like humous: about a pound of podded beans were cooked (boiled for maybe eight minutes) and then skinned - the grey skin has little to offer in the way of pleasure or taste - to leave the little jade jewels that are far more appealing. Four or five cloves of garlic were crushed and added to them, then the lot zapped in the processor with a glug of olive oil (one glug being nine standard dribbles) along with a big pinch of salt, several turns of the pepper mill, and the juice of half a lemon, plus a tsp of cumin seeds that had been reduced to powder in the grinder and a tsp of paprika. Zap again until it looks nice and slutchy and it's ready to serve on toast, with a wrap or on its own.

Another current glut is beet, that before our hols was tiny, after has grown just beyond the tennis ball dimensions that are generally ideal. The process is the same, except the beet (three makes a batch) is boiled unpeeled so it retains the juice and colour for 25 minutes or more, until a knife-point enters easily.

Two slices of stale bread (crusts removed) are wetted with cold water and squeezed, then the pap added to the processor with a handful of walnut pieces and worked to a paste. The peeled beets are zapped with that paste plus olive oil, the juice of half a lemon, sea salt, lots of smoked paprika and two tsp of ground cumin, one of ground fennel seeds, and half a tsp of ground pepper corns. Garlic would be good, but as my wife prefers for diplomatic reasons not to stink out her office (and indeed the entire floor if I had my way with the quantities) that last lot was free of my favourite flavouring. Serve with a lemon slice to add some extra sharpness if wanted. Texture can be according to taste, just process the paste until a fingerful is to your liking - for me it cries out to have some coarse graininess to it, but a more sophisticated smooth style (sounds like a brain-dead late night dinner jazz programme) would only mean running the motor for another couple of minutes.

A bonus with both of those humouses (humae? humice?) is their fantastic colour, especially in the case of the beetroot version, like looking into a deep glass of rich burgundy. For those not used to much beet, your wee the next day will be like a watery version of the same, so don't call 111 or 999 when you see it.