Dinner's On The Table – The Personal Chef & Home Cooking Resource

My husband and I are on a hummus kick.  It's one of the healthiest dips out there.  What could be bad about chick peas, olive oil, lemon juice, garlic and tahini?  Add some roasted garlic, olives, roasted red peppers or pine nuts and it's even better.  There are so many things you can do with hummus. 

Making it is easy.  If you have a blender or a Magic Bullet, now is the time to break them in if you haven’t used them lately.  The easiest way to make a batch is to drain and rinse a can of chick peas.  Put the chick peas into the blender with a few teaspoons of tahini, the juice of half a lemon, a few teaspoons of olive oil, a few cloves of garlic, a bit of cumin and add enough water to almost cover the chick peas.  Then blend them until you have a nice smooth paste.  Taste it to see if you have enough tahini, lemon juice, olive oil and to see if you need salt.  You can add just about anything to the blender for additional flavor.  Once you like the flavor, pour it onto a plate and stir it with the back of a spoon to make a groove.  Sprinkle your toppings, additional chick peas, pine nuts, roasted red peppers, carmelized onions, sun dried tomatoes, spices, you get the idea, then drizzle with really good olive oil.  It’s now ready to devour.  (If you don’t have the 5 minutes it takes to make a basic batch of hummus, Cedars is good, Sabra is great, but yours will be the best ever!)

The possibilities are endless as to how to eat hummus.  You can scoop it up with fresh pita, baked pita chips, tortilla chips, baby carrots, sliced veggies, a spoon,  your fingers.  Just don’t double dip!  You can make a sandwich by placing lettuce, tomato, cucumber and whatever other veggies you have on hand into a pita pocket.  Spoon some hummus in and enjoy.  If you have any leftover, spread it on bread instead of mayo for a roast beef or turkey sandwich.  I haven’t tried it for breakfast yet, but that veggie hummus sandwich sure sounds good.

We haven’t tried brushing our teeth with it, but the Zohan seems to like it.  (If you haven’t seen Don’t Mess With The Zohan with Adam Sandler, check it out.  He does some really strange things with hummus.) 

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I’ve been a bit lazy with posts this summer, so I decided to kick off September with a new survey.  Who doesn’t like a nice piece of fruit?  We’ve picked just about everything on trees this summer and we want to know if you’ve been to the orchard.  Do you have a strawberry patch in your back yard, or blueberry bushes.  You get the idea.  The link will bring you to my newest survey at Survey Monkey.  Thank’s for participating!

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=nm_2bGL4cL95O0POo_2fSlW5ag_3d_3d">Click Here to take survey

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About a year ago, we decided to try out a new restaurant in Hyde Park.  Rocco’s opened across from the Culinary Institute a few months earlier and we hadn’t tried it yet, so we stopped in for a slice of pizza.  They had a great selection of pies along with my husbands favorite, rice balls.  Over the course of the next year we’ve had pizza or appetizers there a few times and enjoyed our meals.  Then they opened up the fine dining room downstairs.  They offer just about every Italian dish you could possibly want, and the prices are great!  The dining room is lovely, and they also have an outside terrace with tables for a romantic evening meal. 

If you go on a Tuesday or Wednesday, check out the special menu they have.  You can get a complete meal for $10.95 – $12.95!  Last week, we ordered Cappelini Puttanesca and Pasta Carbonara which both come with a salad and garlic knots.  We usually order dressing on the side since you either don’t get enough, or you can’t find the salad under the globs of dressing.  I can’t tell you the last time I got a salad properly dressed in a restaurant, but ours came with just the right amount of creamy blue cheese dressing coating every leaf of lettuce evenly.  Not too much, not too little.  The lettuce was a nice assortment of greens, the tomato was ripe, and the onions were sliced paper thin.  It’s a good thing we’re both addicted to garlic, as the garlic knots were awesome!  Our meals came out piping hot and totally yummy!  As hard as we tried to save some to take home, we couldn’t help ourselves.  The biggest problem with finishing our meals is we never manage to save room for dessert!

One of these days!

There are many good restaurants in the area that you’ve tried over and over again.  Do yourself a favor and give Rocco’s a try.  You won’t be sorry!

www.roccospizza.net

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