Cashew Hummus

This past summer I discovered a great cook book, A Year in Lucy's Kitchen by Lucy Waverman. Since my library is over flowing with cook books, I signed it out from the library. It was not a random choice, I had read a review of it under the banner of cookbooks you will want for Christmas. I marked each appealing recipe with a sticky note. Usually I will not find more than five recipes per book that look interesting, novel or repeatable. However, with this book when I was finished reading it, looked like a yellow sticky forest. I showed the book to one of my friends who said I should return the book to the library with the stickies in tact to see if others would recognize superior recipes. We had a great laugh. I returned the book sans the sticky notes and went and bought my own copy. What I realized was, it is worth buying cook books by great cooks. So many cookbooks are written because they can be, to raise a profile of a restaurant, bring attention to an issue like healthy eating or ethnic flavours, or to raise funds for an organization. The question is, how many cookbooks are actually written by exceptional cooks. I think Lucy Waverman is one of those cooks. This particular cookbook also has a value added feature. There are wine pairings and menu suggestions. After having attended Jennifer Cockrall-King's Food and Wine Writing class in Penticton, I have a new respect for wine pairings. It truly makes a difference. For this dish the wine pairing is fino sherry.

Please note, this is not the original recipe. I decreased the oil from 3/4 to 1/2 cup and balanced the consistency with the chickpea water and made a few other tweaks. Play with the flavours. You can increase the cumin, decrease the garlic or add less salt but when you do make these changes and the result is very good, record the change.

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>1 cup dried chick peas soaked over night and drained. This was the first time I did this and the flavour was superior to using canned chick peas, I wondered why it had taken me so long to adopt this method. In fact I made 8 cups of chick peas in my slow cooker and froze the ones I did not need.
2 cups of water
1/2 tsp dried red chillies
1 bay leaf
2 spring of thyme. I grew thyme in my garden and have a use sip lock bag in my freezer
1 cup unsalted cashews
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tsp chopped garlic
2 tsp ground cumin
salt for flavour

Bring to boil the chick peas, bay leaf, red pepper chillies and thyme in the water and then simmer for 40 minutes. Drain chick peas saving the cooking water, combine with the rest of thee ingredients and puree in the food processor. Add the chick pea cooking water to thin the hummus to the desired consistency. Serve with a variety of crackers. This is a gluten free dip and so I tend to use gluten free crackers. I love the flavour of the cumin with the cashews. Usually when I think of hummus, I taste oil, lemon and garlic in my mouth. A great combination but this one is a definite rival!