Recipe – kale hummus with crispy kale crisps

An easy to make delicious, seasonal, healthy, economical and very, very green hummus with a moreish crispy kale topping.
Kale is one of those veggies which can, with careful planning and some crop protection, be in season for most of the year but for me it feels autumnal and wintery. Gradually the summer vegetables, whose colour and height have dominated the plot – beans, sweetcorn, climbing squashes – are harvested and the remains added to the compost heap. Now is the time for brassicas to come into their full sculptural glory – their rich green leaves vibrant in the autumn sunshine.

And autumn rain too, as that is what we’ve mostly been having here for days and days….!

For this recipe I used Cavolo Nero kale but any kale is fine including the firmer leaves of perennial kales.

The hummus is delicious with bread and raw crudités, mixed through rice and pasta as a sauce, and served with hot roasted vegetables. I love dipping chips in hummus (fries for Americans!)

I used dried chickpeas soaked over night and then cooked, but as always have made sure that the recipe can just as easily be made with tins of chickpeas and ingredients from the shop.

In the photos I am making twice this quantity because lunch was for 20, that’s why there are 2 garlic bulbs.

I took the photos with my phone whilst making lunch, so they are not fancy! See the rest of the dishes at the end of the recipe.

Ingredients

A big bunch of kale – 4-5 stems for the hummus and as many as you can for the crisps, I used 10

250g cooked chickpeas or a 400g can of chickpeas – or same quantity of white beans

4 tbsp tahini

juice 1/2 lemon

2 onions

1/2 bulb garlic or one small one (more if you want more garlic)

salt and pepper

oil (olive or sunflower)

 

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 200˚C.

Drain the cooked (or canned) chickpeas and reserve the liquid.

Put the kale for the hummus to one side.

Slice the onions and place in an oven proof dish with the garlic bulbs, drizzle with oil and cook for around 15 minutes until they are soft. Leave to cool.

 

Whilst the onions are cooking make the crisps, strip the leaves from the main stems (the stems can be composted or saved to add to stocks). Rip the leaves into pieces around 5cm long and place on an oven tray. Sprinkle on a little salt and pepper (if desired) and a drizzle of oil, wiggle it about with your fingers coat the leaves and place in the oven.

 

Cook for 7-10 minute checking every few minutes to make sure that the kale around the edge isn’t burning. With a metal fish slice (spatula) move the kale around to ensure even cooking.

When it is all crisp remove from the oven and leave to cool. Try not to eat them all, they are so delicious!

For the hummus, place the tahini, chick peas, lemon juice, seasoning, cooked onions and garlic squeezed from the cloves into a food processor. Remove the kale from the stalks (just as you did for the kale crisps) and add. Replace the lid and turn on, gradually adding the cooking (or can) liquid until the hummus is as smooth as you wish.

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Spoon into a serving dish and decorate with the crisps – or serve those in a separate bowl. Enjoy!

Here are the other dishes I made on the same morning for the course lunch – everything made from scratch using homegrown ingredients (as much as is humanly possible in the UK – we bought the chickpeas, olive oil, salt etc).

Some of these dishes are new recipes, others are in my book The Creative Kitchen which I’m happy to say now has 63 reviews on Amazon 🙂 This is one of the latests reviews:

And here are the lunch dishes