muhummara: spicy red pepper dip
You know what’s so totally overrated? Hummus. Especially the store-bought kind, and excluding the kind that has a 1:1 chickpea-tahini ratio (I’m a girl who loves her tahini). But out of all the Middle Eastern dips to be glorified in XL tubs at Costco, hummus?!?
Don’t get me wrong - I do buy hummus on my weekly grocery runs. And that’s because hummus is like creamy peanut butter - you know you need it in your pantry, but it’s rarely the first thing you reach for when you want a good spread. Enter muhummara: a spicy dip from the Levant region of the Middle East. It’s made with red peppers, nuts, and pomegranate molasses which gives it that spicy-crunchy-sweet quality. So if hummus is like peanut butter, muhummara is like that cool artisanal almond butter from some organic farm in California.
Pro tip: head over to my story highlights for “Monday Makes” to see how this is made.
MUHUMMARA: A SPICY MIDDLE EASTERN RED PEPPER DIP
INGREDIENTS
4 large red bell peppers
2-3 slices of leftover bread (sandwich bread works well)
1 cup raw walnuts
1/2 cup olive oil
3/4 cup pomegranate molasses
1/4 cup spicy red pepper paste* (sub: 1/4 cup tomato paste + 3 tbsp. red chili flakes)
2 tsp. ground cumin
*spicy red pepper paste can be found in Middle Eastern specialty grocery stores or online, like this one
DIRECTIONS
Make the breadcrumbs: Place bread slices on a baking dish in a 200ºF/95ºC oven for 20 minutes, or until bread is hard and dry. You don’t want to toast your bread, just dry it out.
Toast the nuts: Bump the heat of the oven to 350ºF/175ºC. Place walnuts on a baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes, until nuts are toasty.
Place breadcrumbs and nuts in the bowl of a food processor and blend until you get a fine crumb. Remove and place in a mixing bowl. Roughly chop red bell peppers and remove all seeds and white pithy parts. Place peppers in food processor and blend into a paste (it will be mushy!). Place peppers in mixing bowl. (Note: you may want to do these two parts together, but don’t. Trust me.)
To the mixing bowl, add the remaining ingredients and mix well until incorporated.
store: in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 weeks or in the freezer for up to 6 months.
diet: vegan, dairy-free (can be gluten-free if you use gluten-free bread)
eat it with: drizzled with extra pomegranate molasses & pita bread for a traditional mezze, with celery sticks and carrots, or as a spread for a chicken or turkey sandwich.
