Compliments of Ger-Nis Culinary and Herb Center, here is a recipe that was made at the Winter Squash class where instructor Tina DeGraff helped eager students make a healthy and flavourful recipe with just a few main ingredients—letting the herbs and squash be the stars of the dish.

Ingredients:

• 2 Delicata Squash, cut in half, seeds removed
• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 4 garlic cloves, sliced
• 2 tablespoons fresh rosemary leaves, chopped
• ¼ cup fresh thyme leaves, chopped
• Salt and freshly ground pepper

Directions:

1. Preheat over to 375 degrees.
2. Place squash in a casserole dish and drizzle with olive oil
3. coat cut-side of squash with garlic, herbs and season with salt and pepper
4. cover with aluminium foil. Roast in over until cooked through, 30 to 40 minutes.

Serve immediately.

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[Editor's note: Following the wonderful POM event last week and the New York City Wine and Food Festival, which POM was a proud sponsor in joining the fight to end childhood hunger by supporting Share our Strength and the Food Bank for NYC, we decided to use POM to make awesome recipes! Here's the first... looks delish!]

This recipe is not just your average jello shot — I want you to think jello shot with a touch of class and elegance. We’re adults now people. No more jello shots from dixie cups. No more jello shots made from nasty cheap vodka that tastes like gasoline. Opt for the fancy stuff — I used Luksusowa for this recipe (a very well priced Polish vodka) and it turned out great. The flavors were smooth and the pomegranate gave it a nice tang.

Everyone loves a cosmo so I opted to make Cosmo Jello Shots topped with fresh pomegranate and raw sugar. It gave the jello shot a surprising texture and made it very fun to eat. Thanks to the lovely folks of POM for providing the awesome pomegranate juice. I was feeling pretty goofy after shooting this post cuz I ate all the scraps…doh!

You can either put the jello shot in shot glasses or cut them out into individual circles from a sheetpan. I would recommend the shot glass method for a fancy dinner party and probably the individual cut-out circles for something less formal (plus it’s less cleanup!). Either way they taste the same and produce the same (party) effect .

Ingredients for POM Cosmo Jello Shots

• 2 packets of gelatin (1 tablespoon)
• 2 1/2 cups POM
• 1/2 cup good-quality Vodka ( I used Luksusowa)
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• raw sugar for garnish
• pomegranate seeds for garnish

In a large bowl mix 1 cup of POM with 1 packet of gelatin, allow to sit for at least 5 minutes or until gelatin is dissolved. Meanwhile in a small saucepan dissolve the sugar and remaining POM and bring to a boil. Once it is boiling turn off the heat and mix with the gelatin mixture. Once thoroughly mixed, add the vodka.

Distribute the mix in shot glasses or into a 6 x 2 glass round pan. Place in fridge and allow to set for at least an hour. When ready to serve, garnish the shot glasses with raw sugar and top with pomegranate seeds. For the jello shots without glasses, simply using a 1/2″ circle cutter cut out as many pieces you can from your pan. Sprinkle with raw sugar and top with pomegranate seeds. Serve immediately and enjoy frequently
** it is easier to use a glass pan when making jello so that it pops out easier when it is done setting.

Interested in more POM Recipes? What about something fitting for the fall? Check out another one of my recipes! POM Mulled Cider!

Photos by Joy Zhang for Appetite for Good.

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I can’t quite believe I’m doing this, but to begin, I will quote a movie I’m sure many of you have seen. “Crabcakes and football, that’s what Maryland does.” – Wedding Crashers, 2005. Technically this quote is incorrect, it should be crabcakes and lacrosse, but it’s close enough. The important part is right – that is, crabcakes. Growing up in Maryland, especially on the Chesapeake Bay, crab is a staple of your diet, whether it be crabs and beer on the deck in the summer, cream of crab soup, cheese and crab dip, or the most important of the all – the all mighty crabcake.

Crabcakes are an art. There are an infinite number of ways to make them, they’re universally adored, but you will never find anything quite like a Maryland crabcake. I mean a true Maryland crabcake, where the crab speaks for itself, and there’s nothing to distract you from that. I take my crabcakes seriously, and like Patrick, have yet to find a proper Maryland crabcake in New York City. At the same time, I haven’t done the amount of research he has – I make my own.

And that’s why I’m here today, to share this recipe with you. I learned this while working in a local seafood restaurant in Charles County, and at one point, this was – officially – the best crabcake in Maryland. How can you resist?

Maryland Crabcakes

Serves 5

Ingredients

• 24 oz Lump Crab Meat
• 1 Lemon
• 1 Egg (Beaten)
• 1 Tbsp Worcestershire Sauce
• 1/2 Cup Crushed Saltines
• 2 Tbsp Old Bay
• 1/2 Cup Mayonnaise
• 1 Cup Vegetable Oil

These measurements are, of course, guidelines – feel free to use more or less, depending on how you enjoy your crabcakes. With something this delicious, it’s hard to go wrong. In addition, the crab meat does not have to be entirely lump crab. For this recipe, I combined 16 ounces of backfin crab meat with 8 ounces of lump crab meat. It worked just fine, and saved some money as well.

1. Crush the Saltines into small pieces. The best technique I’ve found involves placing the Saltines into a gallon zip-lock bag, and crushing them with a rolling pin.
2. Pour the vegetable oil into a pan, set the heat to medium.
3. Combine the crab meat, mayonnaise, Old Bay, Worcestershire sauce, crushed Saltines and egg in a bowl. Mix together with your hands. Squeeze the 1/2 of the lemon over this mixture.
4. Form this mixture into balls roughly the size of your palm. These balls should be completely circular, do not flatten them out. The measurements above should give you enough for 5 good-sized crabcakes, but feel free to make them bigger or smaller.

5. Place these balls into the oil. Fry roughly 5 minutes on each side, until the crabcake is a uniform golden brown. Place these balls on a plate covered with a paper towel, to catch the excess oil.
6. Squeeze the other 1/2 lemon over the fried crabcakes.
7. Sprinkle Old Bay over the fried crabcakes, to taste.

And you’re done! If you’d prefer not to fry the crabcakes, broiling works just as well, although in my opinion, makes for a less delicious crabcake. To broil the crabcake, just place on a well oiled pan, and broil for approximately 20 minutes, until the crabcake is a golden brown.

Some prefer to eat their crabcakes with tartar sauce (equal parts mayonnaise and relish), but I let the crabcake speak for itself, with nothing but Old Bay to accentuate the taste. (By far the most important part of the recipe, besides the crab. The spice of champions.)

So go forth, make crabcakes, impress your friends with your culinary wizardry! These are magical.

Photos by Patrick Chang for Appetite for Good.

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As a restaurant as inspiring as Matsuri in philanthropic causes and food. They’ve inspired me to try to cook some more non-sushi Japanese cuisines. Japanese food in the past decade has become a regular staple in American cuisine, but it has been limited to mainly sushi. I am a big fan of the underdog and one of my favorite Japanese dishes that isn’t sushi is the okonomiyaki. I love the ring to it. Okonomiyaki is probably best described as a Japanese pancake but don’t let it deceive you. It’s definitely not sweet and it’s not just batter! I guess you can call it a cabbage pancake. Wait, but then there are all kinds of other stuff in it! Okay, I give up but the name is derived from the word お好み okonomi, which means “what you like/want” and 焼 yaki which means “grilled” or “cooked”.

There are several different variations of the okonomiyaki but I’ll show you how to make my favorite, the Kansai version, originating from Osaka.

Ingredients

• Green Cabbage 3.5oz (100g)
• Scallions/Green Onions 0.5oz (14g) (We used extra scallions in ours because I personally like green onions and I had some extra)
• Julienned Carrots 1.0oz (28g)
• Eggs
• Meat: Shrimp or Beef (you can use bacon, pork, or other seafood)
• Aonori (Green Seaweed)
• Katsuobushi (Dry Bonito Flakes)
• Okonomiyaki Flour (one bag makes approximately 8-10 pieces)
• Okonomi Sauce
• Kewpie Mayonnaise

If you have any trouble buying the last 5 items, any Japanese grocery store or market will have them!

1. Shred the vegetables. Shred soft leafs of cabbage head into thin strips (I like to save time and just dice them up into thin shreds similar to cole slaw). Repeat with carrots and scallions.
2. Create the batter. Add 2/3 cup water and 3/4 cup of okonomiyaki flour into a bowl and mix until everything is dissolved without chunks. Then add in the eggs and mix again.
3. Mix in all the vegetables in the batter mixture.

4. To cook the okonomiyaki, spread the batter evenly into a 6 inch circle.
5. For the Shrimp: dice the shrimp into bite size pieces and toss in with the mixture.
6. For the Beef (or Pork): lay thin slices of beef on top of the 6 inch circles.

7. Cook each side for 5 minutes, maybe longer to get a nice golden brown color.
8. Flip and repeat for another 5 minutes or till its golden brown.
9. Serve the okonomiyaki with a drizzle of okonomi sauce, mayonnaise (my preference is a 2:1 ratio) Add aonori sprinkles and katsuobushi.

Photos by Patrick Chang for Appetite for Good.

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Rice bowl dishes is a staple in Asian home cooking, not only because it’s easy to make, but it really embodies the essence of Asian cuisine: rice. Using rice as the foundation and adding different “toppings” becomes your Asian equivalent of pasta or pizza. (Though I would argue that pasta and pizza are just Italian versions of rice bowls.) Rice bowls can be called different things depending on the country – 丼ぶり donburi in Japan, 盖饭 gai fan in China, etc.

I’ve made plenty of easy Chinese rice bowls – either creating my own concoction or following my mom’s recipe – but this past weekend, I decided to try something new: oyakodon. What can I say, I was going beyond my Chinese roots and exploring making cuisine across Asia. (I owe LUCKYRICE this inspiration!) Translated literally, 親子丼 oyakodon means “parent and child rice bowl” (親 oya = parent, 子 ko = child, 丼 don = donburi = rice bowl). Essentially, it is a rice bowl with both chicken and egg, thus the parent and child.

The dish is made very simply by simmering chicken and onions in a mixture of water, dashi, soy sauce, and other seasonings, and then topping it with beaten eggs. Sounds easy, huh? It really was! Even for a first timer!

Oyakodon

• 1 cup water or dashi
• 3 tablespoons soy sauce
• 3 tablespoons mirin
• A pinch of sugar
• 1 medium sized yellow or white onion, cut in half, sliced thinly
• 1 lb of chicken breast or skinless chicken thigh, cut into bite sized pieces
• 2 stalks of scallion
• 2 large eggs, beaten
• Shichimi togarashi

1. Cook the rice (see recipe below) and prepare the chicken, onions, and scallions. I like to use chicken thigh (I dislike white meat) because they’re tenderer and don’t dry out easily. Slice 1 stalk of scallion long and thin. Leave the other one for garnish. Onions should be sliced thinly.
2. Combine the water or dashi, soy sauce, mirin, and sugar in a skillet or wok. If you don’t have dashi on hand like me, you can use water and substitute with hon-dashi in a box.
3. Bring to boil (notice there’s no oil involved), about 2 minutes, and add chicken and onions. Simmer until sauce is reduced about half, about 10 minutes. Add scallions.
4. Taste and adjust. Pour beaten eggs on top to coat everything evenly (yes, even the liquidy sauce).
5. Bring flame down to low. Cover for half to one minute, depending on how raw you like your eggs.
6. Serve over rice. Use remaining scallions and shichimi (if you want a slight kick) as garnish. Makes 2-3 portions.

Total cooking time: 12 minutes.

Some people like to add some mitsuba (a Japanese parsley-like plant) with the chicken and onions. That’s entirely up to you. I didn’t have any mitsuba on hand. It adds a nice green color to the dish, like the scallions.

The shichimi is also my personal preference. It adds a little spice to an otherwise monotonous flavored dish (don’t get me wrong, I like the simplicity of the taste).

This time, I decided to be a little adventurous and make a non-traditional steamed rice. Sometimes, to jazz up an otherwise boring bento, Japanese people like to make 混ぜご飯 maze gohan, or mixed rice. They put a variety of things in the rice cooker with the rice, such as mushrooms, hijiki, even chicken. This is my take on maze gohan

Rice Steamed in Chicken Broth

• 1 cup short-grained rice
• 1.5 cups chicken broth
• 1 carrot

1. Wash the rice with water and drain until almost all the water is gone.
2. Peel the carrot and cut into 2 inch long segments. Slice thinly until you get 2 inch long and thin slices.
3. Mix rice and carrot slices well. Add chicken broth. You’re basically substituting the water for chicken broth.
4. Turn on your rice cooker and let it do its magic!

Your rice should come out smelling like chicken stew. Yum! I also love the colors of the carrots on the rice. Makes any dish look pretty!

Photos by Patrick Chang for Appetite for Good.

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There are a few things that define me, and one of them is my love for chicken fried steak. Upon moving to New York City I discovered a city as diverse as New York City did not have a decent chicken fried steak! I have scoured the city, from Tribeca to Morningside Heights, for a decent chicken fried steak but have fallen short. I am convinced it doesn’t exist in New York!

It’s hard to get more Texan than a chicken fried steak. Whenever I tell people my favorite food is a chicken fried steak, I get the same response from everyone: an extremely perplexed look with a “huh?!?!, what the hell is a chicken fried steak?” Everyone seems to always think its some sort of fried chicken but I always have to explain to them it has nothing to do with chicken but a fried piece of beaten steak smothered in cream gravy. There is no chicken whatsoever in chicken fried steak. The only similarity is the breading and it’s fried like a fried chicken.

To satisfy my caving for, I set upon perfecting my own personal chicken fried steak. I have gone through batches and batches of failures until this past weekend – my most successful creation yet!

Chicken Fried Steak

• 5 cubed steak
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 cup corn starch
• Saltine crackers
• 1/4 tablespoon salt (I prefer sea salt)
• 1 tablespoon ground black pepper
• 1/2 tablespoon cayenne pepper
• 1/2 tablespoon garlic powder
• White pepper
• 1/2 inch of oil, butter, or melted shortening or Crisco (or all of the above) in your pan

I usually do not measure my seasoning but for the purpose of sharing my ingredients and recipe. I tend to eye ball everything.

1. Get 3 empty containers out to create your dry batter, egg wash and completed battered chicken fried steak.
2. Combine the flour, corn starch, and all the seasonings together in the dry batter mix.
3. Take your cubed steaks and depending on your preference of thickness, you can beat it some more to flatten it out or just start seasoning it. I prefer to beat it a little more and try to get some seasoning in the steak. I season each side of the steak separately after I flatten it: sprinkle a pinch of salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, garlic powder, and white pepper.
4. Then proceed to beat the steak with a meat tenderizer. This way the seasoning is embedded in the meat.
5. Flip it over and repeat on the other side.
6. Take the beaten steak and dip it in the dry batter mix and make sure both sides are completely coated in flour. Set the floured steak aside in the 3rd dish.
7. Repeat the process for each steak. Once you have completely seasoned and dry battered each of the steak in the first layer of dry batter, you can proceed to the next stage of battering.
8. Take your oil, butter (I used an entire stick of butter), shortening, or Crisco, or a combination of all 4 (like what I did) and heat it up in a cast iron pan. While the oil is heating up, prep your second coat of batter on the chicken fried steak.
9. Take out your saltine crackers and break them up into small chunks of various sizes and mix them into the flour.
10. Crack open your eggs and mix them in the 2nd dish you’ve set aside in the beginning to create your egg wash, sprinkle a pinch of salt and pepper.
11. Now take the already battered CFS which are sitting and waiting in the 3rd bowl and dip them through the egg wash, making sure both sides are covered and let the excess drip off.
12. Completely coat the chicken fried steak that just went through the egg wash in the new flour/saltine cracker batter.
13. The pan of hot oil should be ready for frying, carefully place the chicken fried steak in the oil. Be very careful and don’t plop it down! Hot oil will splash!
14. Fry for roughly 3-5 minutes till you have a nice golden crust and flip and do the same for the other side.
15. Remove and place on a wire rack to cook and so the breading doesn’t get soggy and repeat the last step with all the other pieces battered steak.
16. Now you’ve successfully created a Patrick version of a true Texan chicken fried steak!

Now onto the CREAM GRAVY! My favorite part. I think the gravy is just as important to the chicken fried steak as is the steak itself. This makes or breaks the chicken fried steak.

Cream Gravy

1. Remove any charred pieces from the pan drippings as you don’t want any burnt taste in your gravy.
2. If you have bacon, I usually fry up some bacon in the pan dripping to get a little bacon flavor and fat in. Remove the bacon after frying.
3. Use the pan drippings and mix the left over seasoned flour (I usually try to not use any of the saltine crackers in the gravy). Blend well. It will be slightly cakey and thick but stir quickly to brown the flour.
4. Gradually stir in 1.5 cups of milk and 1 cup of chicken broth.
5. Add more liquid or flour for your desired consistency (cream gravy is suppose to be thick!) and I personally like to add more pepper to the gravy.
6. Once the gravy is thoroughly mixed without chunks, it’s done! Smother and enjoy!

Voila! Taste the goodness!

In an attempt to create a NY chicken fried steak good enough for a Texan, we’re teaming up with Midtown Lunch and the Schnitzel Truck on a chicken fried steak!

Also, calling out to any restaurants in New York City who think they have the best chicken fried steak or can make the best CFS! We are interested in planning a chicken fried steak throwdown to benefit the Gulf Coast oil spill relief efforts. Compete and help raise funds to help the Gulf Coast region devastated by the BP oil spill! Email me and we’ll talk! How exciting would that be? Raising the bar, discovering delicious Chicken Fried Steak, or introducing Chicken Fried Steak to NYC and supporting a great cause at the same time!

Photos by Patrick Chang for Appetite for Good.

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For those accustomed to the variety of the grocery store, the selection of foods at a farmer’s market can at first seem a bit paltry. In May, Midwestern farms are harvesting a limited set of produce: asparagus, rhubarb, spinach, and a few other greens like chard and mustard leaf. Stalls piled high with these seasonal vegetables are interspersed with vendors selling grass-fed beef, organic pork loins and ribs, and free-range chickens and their eggs. There are several nurseries selling pan-seasonal herbs and lovely collections of begonias, lilies, and daisies. A sprinkling of stalls feature artisanal cheeses or hawk freshly made smoothies and crepes. Snacking on delicious honey crisp apples, my boyfriend and I scoured the market in pursuit of our goal to create an (almost) entirely local Midwest meal.

We collected the followings items:

• 1 whole organic free-range chicken (5 lbs!)
• 1 head of spinach
• 1 lb. of asparagus
• 1 lb. of rhubarb

Along with a few ingredients from the grocery: butter, salt, brown and white sugar, oats, and lemons, as well as herbs from our window herb garden, we were ready to get started.

The resulting menu description would read:

Mature Illinois spinach with olive oil balsamic vinaigrette and chevre
Organic rosemary and thyme roasted chicken served with fresh asparagus
Baked rhubarb and pecan-oat crisp

At home, we immediately put the chicken in the sink, where it took its sweet time defrosting. A few hours later, it could be disemboweled and using paper towels, we patted it dry, inside and out. Next the chicken needed to be trussed to keep the legs and wings close and ensure more even cooking. I’ll be honest, trussing a chicken goes well beyond my culinary skills (I almost burned my apartment building down the day before making popcorn), but my boyfriend, with a little help of unscented dental floss, was able to do it in no time. Next we applied salt and pepper and our main course was ready to pop in the oven (450 degrees for an hour).

In the meantime we enjoyed a strawberry-lemon cocktail and cleaned the spinach and asparagus. At O minus 10 minutes, the chicken was giving off a delectable aroma and it was time to prepare the sides. The asparagus was snapped at its breaking point and steamed for a few minutes and the spinach was ripped into bite-size pieces, topped with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and a little creamy Basque sheep cheese.

When the chicken came out, we used a brush to baste it in its juices and massaged a half tablespoon each of chopped rosemary and thyme into the chicken’s beautifully browned skin. After it was allowed to cool for 15 minutes, it was time to dig in.

The result was mouthwatering. Literally. My mouth is watering right now just thinking about that meal. The chicken was tender, juicy, and rich. The skin was crispy without being fatty. In their 15 minute debut, the rosemary and thyme had permeated not only the skin but the meat of the chicken. The flavor had more depth and complexity than I have ever tasted in chicken. It’s hard to imagine that this was made from the same animal that provides the ubiquitous breast at the grocery and comprises the nugget at the fast food counter. Why the difference in taste? One possibility is that cooking a chicken as a whole allows its own fats and juices to creep through the meat. To test this theory, we recreated our recipe the following weekend, only this time using a grocery store bought, non-organic chicken. Chicken number two was much tastier than a pre-cut piece of meat, but it didn’t hold a candle to the farmer’s market chicken. Although substantially cheaper, the store bought chicken was blander and lacked the variety of textures and tastes in the organic chicken. Perhaps what we tasted in our first attempt was the result of a chicken that had lived a happy life, able to move around freely and eat a varied diet. Eating a chicken whole is certainly a more primal experience than the average meal. Though we had begun the meal civilly enough, with a fork and carving knife, we found ourselves at the end of the meal with greasy hands and rotund bellies sitting around the clean carcass of the chicken, feeling like the carnivores we always were.

While the chicken was certainly the star of the show, the spinach and asparagus shone in their own way. The mature spinach had an interesting taste, that was less bitter than its better known baby form and it was crunchier, crinkled, and of an appetizing deep green color. It was so flavorful that it would have been a shame to dress in anything more complex than oil and vinegar. The asparagus was tender and lovely, but truth be told, not substantially tastier than the kind you can buy at the store.

After gorging ourselves on all 5 lbs. of that lovely chicken, we decided to wait until the next morning for the rhubarb crisp. My boyfriend found a recipe on the New York Times website, created by one of our favorite chefs, Mark Bittman. Like most of Bittman’s recipes, this was quick and easy. He cut up our pound of the rhubarb into small pieces and added ¼ cup of white sugar, a tablespoon each of lemon juice and zest, all into a greased baking dish. For the crisp, he mixed up 6 tablespoons of butter, ¾ cups brown sugar, ½ cup of flour, and a little cinnamon and salt into the food processor, then added ½ cup each of oats and pecans. This was crumbled over the rhubarb mix and stuck into the oven for 45 minutes at 375 degrees.

The crisp was wonderful. The lovely red rhubarb was deliciously tart. It made your mouth feel like it was eating a bag of sourpatch kids in one chew. But the earthy sweetness of the caramelized oat and pecan perfectly balanced the taste. The rhubarb was delightfully soft and gooey, and slightly stringy and the crisp was sticky but still crunchy. We ate the entire thing in one sitting and this weekend, I begged my boyfriend to make me another.

Eating locally is certainly easier said than done, but meals like these remind you that there are more reasons than a good conscience for choosing sustainable ingredients and they all have to do with your taste buds.

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Nothing beats the perfect bowl of hummus, made from mainly chickpeas, it’s delicious AND good for you. I was instantly drawn to this recipe for its simplicity– made with wholesome healthy ingredients it not only goes great as a dip but is awesome in sandwiches, salads, and wraps. This recipe is from Chef Michael Solomonov who was born in G’nei Yehudah, Israel and was raised in Pittsburgh. In May 2008, Michael opened Zahav in Philadelphia, where his main influences come from the traditional cuisine of his native Israel.

An excerpt from Chef Michael Solomonov in Food and Wine states –

“Before opening Zahav restaurant in Philadelphia, chef Michael Solomonov visited hummus parlors all over Israel trying to find the best recipe. “Hummus is the hardest thing to get right,” he says. “It has to be rich, creamy and mildly nutty.” To make his hummus luxuriously smooth, he soaks the chickpeas overnight with baking soda to soften them. While Americans now flavor hummus with everything from pureed red peppers to fresh herbs, Solomonov says among the fanciest garnishes you can find in Israel are whole chickpeas, paprika and lemon-spiked tahini, used for hummus masabacha.”

Ingredients for Israeli Hummus with Paprika and Whole Chickpeas:

• 1/2 pound dried chickpeas
• 1 tablespoon baking soda
• 7 large garlic cloves, unpeeled
• 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cumin, plus more for garnish
• 1/2 cup tahini, at room temperature (see note)
• 1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• Salt
• Paprika, for garnish
• 1/4 cup chopped parsley
• Pita bread, for serving

In a medium bowl, cover the dried chickpeas with 2 inches of water and stir in the baking soda. Refrigerate the chickpeas overnight. Drain the chickpeas and rinse them under cold water.

In a medium saucepan, cover the chickpeas with 2 inches of fresh water. Add the garlic cloves and bring to a boil. Simmer over moderately low heat until the chickpeas are tender, about 40 minutes. Drain, reserving 10 tablespoons of the cooking water and 2 tablespoons of the chickpeas. Rinse the chickpeas under cold water. Peel the garlic cloves.

In a food processor, puree the chickpeas with 1/2 cup of the reserved cooking water, 1/4 cup of the olive oil and 6 of the garlic cloves. Add the cumin along with 1/4 cup each of the tahini and lemon juice and process until creamy. Season the hummus with salt and transfer to a serving bowl. Wipe out the food processor. Add the remaining 1/4 cup of tahini, 1/4 cup of olive oil, 2 tablespoons of reserved cooking water, 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and garlic clove and puree.

Using a ladle, make an indent in the center of the hummus. Spoon in the tahini-lemon mixture. Sprinkle the hummus with the cumin and paprika. Garnish with the reserved whole chickpeas and the parsley, and serve with pita bread.

I like making fresh hummus at home without the weird preservatives that you find in-store. It’s made of pure ingredients: organic chickpeas, extra virgin olive oil, tahini, lemon juice with paprika and cumin to finish it off — it’s amazingly simple yet delicious. To learn the proper way to soak legumes and obtain the maximum nutrients, my friend Divina offers a wonderful guide here. Chickpeas rich in protein and folate, are high in dietary fiber which results in healthy colons and lowers your risk for diabetes and heart disease.

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