It’s pink because of the fistful of beets in it from Local Roots Farm. Last week’s CSA box left me with a number of heavy vegetables to sort into meals, but it was so hot here (record high temperatures for all time in Seattle) that I didn’t feel comfortable loitering about the oven. Hummus seemed like a nice, cool alternative, and I’m a sucker for day-glo food.

I modded a recipe I found at AllRecipes.com. Here’s how I made it:

+  1 can of organic chickpeas, drained
+  1 large onion, chopped (from our CSA)
+  about 1 pound beets (from our CSA)
+  1/2 cup tahini (made in Seattle!)
+  3 cloves garlic, crushed (from our CSA–I used an entire tiny bulb)
+  1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
+  1 tablespoon ground cumin
+  1/4 cup olive oil

Drain your chickpeas and place in a large heavy saucepan. Add onion, cover with water and bring to a boil over medium heat. Cook until the onion has softened up. Drain and set aside to cool, making sure you don’t throw out the cooking liquid. You’ll want to save about a cup of it for later.

Meanwhile, in a stock pot, cover beets with water and bring to a boil over medium heat. Cook until the beets are soft enough to slice easily.  Drain and allow beets to cool a bit before removing the skins and chopping. I tossed all of the beet roots, tops, and skins back into the stock pot, and dyed some muslin with the bright pink juice, ’cause I’m crafty like that.

If you have a food processor, you can skip the next bit, but I have a very minimalist kitchen, so I had to do my hummus in stages. Get out a big mixing bowl, and dump in your beet chunks, chickpeas and onions, tahini, garlic, lemon juice, and cumin. I smacked all the ingredients around rather vigorously with one of my favorite kitchen implements: the potato masher. This enabled me to remove most of the really massive clumps in the mixture, and it’s kind of satisfying, smashing all of the brilliant vegetables together (feel free to make zombie noises here, and lick the bowl).

Once the mixture was mostly smooth, I processed small batches of it in my blender until it was as spreadable as commercially prepared hummus (though much, much brighter). Now’s a good time to throw in a bit of that cooking liquid you saved at the beginning, if your hummus is too chunky and is getting caught in the blender blades.

I also made a huge, pink, globby mess of the kitchen very late at night, which was strangely satisfying.

Serve your pink mess of joy with pita (and maybe a bib)! Mine has a little extra tahini and olive oil on top. Super yum.