So the What You Sow party is now in full swing. We celebrated yesterday by drinking plenty of craft beer based on Jonathan’s beer recommendations and on Friday we showed you a simple but beautiful way to decorate your cakes. In addition to that, lots of you have been taking part in our Pinterest "Garden Party" competition, sharing images of your dream party and we’ve had lots of entries to our Snail Plant Pot giveaway over on Instagram too.
Today we turn our thoughts to party nibbles with a tasty recipe for beetroot houmous from Laura Fox Gill.
Laura won the first What You Sow competition I ran back in the early days and we’ve been in touch ever since. She’s a champion instagrammer, sharing glimpses into life in Brighton and beautifully styled images of vegan recipes which she writes up on her fabulous blog Kitsunetsuki Kitchen.
I’m completely delighted that she is taking part in our party, my friends and I have used her recipes at get-togethers before so I can confirm how good they are.
Enjoy the recipe!
When Lyndsey invited me to contribute a vegan party recipe to celebrate What You Sow’s first birthday, I knew I had to go with something both seasonal and a little bit special. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who doesn’t like houmous, so that was my starting point. I had a quick look at http://www.eattheseasons.co.uk/ - a website I highly recommend - and noticed that beetroot is in season in the UK at the moment. I’m not usually the biggest beetroot fan, but I’d seen a photo of some beautiful bright beetroot houmous recently and thought that would be ideal for an eye-catching party dish!
The recipe is really simple, all you need to do is blend together the following:
250g cooked beetroot
120g chickpeas (AKA half a 240g tin)
1 large garlic clove, crushed
1 tbs tahini
1/2 tbs cumin
1/2 paprika
1 tbs olive oil
a dash of lemon juice
a pinch of sea salt.
I read somewhere that the best way to make houmous is to blend the ingredients one at a time so you can taste it as you go—seems wise to me! This recipe makes a large bowl of houmous and it’ll keep in the fridge if it doesn’t get guzzled up straight away. The beetroot makes it a fair bit softer and gloopier than normal houmous, so if you’re not a fan of that texture just re-adjust the beetroot-chickpea ratio for a thicker dip.
This houmous (as is the case with most others) goes great with raw vegetable sticks such as carrots or cucumber, bit it’s also really tasty with bread so if you’re doing a dinner party it’d go well with a bread basket for pre-dinner nibbles.