Hummus is Yummus.

This week Beth spotted some big ripe mangoes at our local produce market. She loves mangoes, and while she talked herself out of going into the back of the store to see if she could buy a case, she DID come home with a few. I've never been a huge fan, but I do like the little packets of mango chutney that comes with the boxed Indian dinners from Target. Tasty, but there is never quite enough of it in the kit. Then it dawned on me, I could make my own chutney, as much as I wanted, and build an Indian or maybe Middle Eastern dinner around it!

A recent trip to Chicago had re-acquainted the family with an old favorite from the neighborhood. Salaam on Kedzie (right by the brown line stop) use

d to be just a small middle eastern food shop, a counter and a displ

ay case wedged between a bakery and a gyros shop. We discovered on this trip that it had expanded to a full sit-down restaurant, with wait staff and piped-in music , beige paint, drop ceiling and giant prints of sites from the holy land on the walls. Actually it was a very pleasant dining experience. In the old days, Salaam seemed much more authentic. It was cramped and hot, with barely enough room to walk through the stacks of pots and pans for sale and the counter. It always smelled kind of funny—the air seemed greasy, spiced and heavy— and faintly smelled like something might have gotten killed in the back. The old Salaam was home to a few grumpy looking Lebanese dudes who huddled over a small table near the door and would suddenly quit arguing in arabic to stare at you when you stepped in. But OH MAN, the hummus. Smooth and creamy, oily-but just oily enough- and so flavorful that it could be eaten all alone with a spoon when nobody was watching. If I could recreate hummus half as good as this, I would be very impressed with myself and probably run out and write a blog about it.

So mango chutney and hummus... what else? Well, I would leave the pita to the Lebanese bakery downtown, for sure. That left just maybe one more dish to fill out the meal. I decided to take another cue from the Target instant Indian meal and try a curried lentil dish. I knew there was a massive stash of lentils in my cupboard, transported back here from Seattle, where once Beth and I discovered the bulk section of a local whole foods type store, and had gotten a little carried away.

A quick grocery getting run netted me a few loose items I would need to create my Papa-ghanoush (i know that's eggplant not hummus, indulge my funny!) and now the clock was ticking. The boy child took a well-timed afternoon nap that allowed me to get started on the hummus and give it a little time to set up and meld. I'd had homemade hummus a few times before, and while it was always good, it never had that smooth, velvety texture and rich flavor of the restaurant style. There were always little chunks of chickpea and it was usually comparatively bland. I did some research on the internets and found a consensus: to get smooth hummus, you must first shell the chickpeas. Shell the chickpeas? All of them? Jesus, that would take forever! Well, more like 2 hours. I shelled chickpeas through and episode of American Pickers, through a longer than usual phone rant from my Dad, and through the Boy destroying a bowl of peaches an cereal. But finally I had the base for my masterpiece. I was ecstatic. I consulted a few recipes online, combined my ingredients in my fancy new Giada De Laurentis food processor, set it to high, hit the button and... nothing. I hadn't used it yet, nor had I tested it before loading it up with 4 cups of chickpeas and half a gallon of freakin' olive oil. Food processor, despite a bit of pleading, swearing and weeping was a no-go. Frustrated, I transferred the stuff to the blender and gave that a whirl. It was laborious, the blender would only do a little at a time, which I then had to spoon into a waiting bowl to make room for the next load. Ugh, messy and dumb. At this point I tasted it. not bad, but still full of little bits of chickpeas! after I shelled every last goddamned one of them? I was pissed. I blended the whole batch AGAIN, mixing in more olive oil and more tahini, hoping to fluff it up and give it a little more of that rich flavor. It helped a little, but it still wasn't right. Regardless, at this point it was time to put on the chauffeur hat and pick up the girls.

When I returned to the kitchen, the heat was really on. I spent so much time effing with the hummus that I had prepared virtually nothing else. I furiously peeled and sliced 6 huge mangoes, dumped them in a big skillet and started adding spices to be cooked down with the chutney. You know what's hard to slice? Mangoes. Once that skin comes off i had a hell of a time holding on to them and not cutting my fingers off as I sliced them into little pieces to be cooked. Not a drop of blood lost, I crushed garlic, chopped onion, peeled and sliced ginger, then... a whole tablespoon of cayenne? Dang, that's alot of hotness, but what do I know, right? in she goes.

On to the lentils. Luckily, lentils cook relatively fast, and I had a pan of bubbling curried goodness in no time. I did overlook a pretty important ingredient while shopping, one can of pureed tomato, which I thought I might have in stock at the back of the cupboard. No dice. I did, however, have a handful of plum tomatoes that were almost too ripe for anything else, so diced and mushed all to hell, into the pan they went. While the lentils cooked I started a pot of rice, and now all systems were go, and it was just a matter of finishing up in time to eat, clear, bathe the children and execute bedtime before their good will ran out.

After a brief food processor tutorial by my wife (who simply put the bowl on the base correctly and started it right up) I was back into the hummus, striving for that golden Salaam standard. I blended and oiled and spiced and blended and blended and blended. Still hard chunks, though they were very small. It was not working. Plus now the spice balance was off a bit. Curses. And very little time to do anything about it! I dumped a Hail Mary final glump of olive oil into the bowl, tossed in another hit of garlic, beat it up a few more seconds and decided to call it. It was dinnertime.

The mango chutney cooked down beautifully and filled the house with a glorious sweet/spicy smell. But even after it cooked down for nearly 45 minutes there was still and enormous amount of it. Oh well, hopefully it's good, eh? The lentils came off pretty well, good consistency, though they did suffer a bit without the added moisture of the tomato puree. The curry really came out nicely, particularly when mixed with a bite of rice and chutney. The chutney turned out to be very good, but HOT. I don't know who uses that much cayenne, but let me tell you, It ain't me. Next time I'll cut it in half. What am I talking about, I have like 4 containers of the stuff in the freezer, there needn't be a next time for chutney.

Then I put out the hummus. Beth knew the high standard I was shooting for with this dish, and she reserved comment. It was decent, but I knew this hummus was not going to dethrone Salaam as the best. (It actually used to say "Salaam is the Best" on their oil-soaked receipts.)

The meal on the whole was pretty successful. Beth and I had our fill, Alice asked for Mac & Cheese, and then did what I took to be an impression of me, tearing up bits of pita, throwing them in her bowl and chanting, "Don't for get the garlic, you got to put in some more garlic" and I made an incredible mess of the kitchen. All of the dishes I prepared were new to me, and all of them were at least edible, which I take as a personal victory. Therefore I say, even when it isn't perfect, hummus is yummus.