Book of Days Tales

Today is International Left-Handers’ Day, promoted first by the Left-Handers’ Club in 1992, the club having been founded in 1990 to raise awareness, especially in schools, concerning the problems that lefties face in the classroom.  I am not sure why, but I am acutely aware of left-handed people, and I especially notice how many actors are lefties —  Morgan Freeman, Bruce Willis, Mark Hamill, Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Scarlett Johansson, Hugh Jackman, Jennifer Lawrence, Owen Wilson, Richard Dreyfuss, Julia Roberts, Angelina Jolie . . . . and on and on.

Ehud Malka, known as the Left-Handed Chef (who has a restaurant in Melbourne), gives us this traditional recipe for hummus, which I reprint verbatim from his website. He notes there that you must use only home-cooked chickpeas (not canned), and the best quality tahini (he recommends Har Bracha, Achva, and Prince). Being a left-handed chef in a professional kitchen is a challenge, partly because many kitchen gadgets are made for right-handers, and partly because left-handed line cooks can break the order of production.

Ingredients:

500g dry chickpeas (preferably 9mm width)

200g tahini paste 

5g pink salt 

2 tbsp lemon juice 

1 tsp bi-carbonate soda

Method:

1. Cover chickpeas with water and soak overnight (at least eight hours)
2. On the following day, make sure chickpeas are still submerged in water and bring to a slow boil with the bi-carb soda. Cooking can take up to one hour sometimes, and make sure to skim the froth off the top while it’s cooking and mix the chickpeas occasionally
3. Once chickpeas are cooked and mushy take off the heat and out of the pot and let it cool down, preferably overnight
4. Now it’s time to make the hummus!
5. Place chickpeas in a food processor with salt and lemon juice and mix until it becomes a runny paste. If your mixer struggles you can add a little water (⅓ cup) to help it process it
6. Then, add the tahini on top and mix it again
7. Make sure to stop and scrape the sides of your food processor so that everything gets mixed together evenly
8. Done! You’ve got hummus
9. At this point you can add more salt or lemon juice to taste