Happy New Year! I know this can be the season of dark nights, empty pockets and the dreaded post Christmas diet, but don’t despair. Spring is only around the corner, and in the meantime I have a lovely receipe for roast carrot humous which I just had to share! This is a great snack or starter, served with crudités or warm flatbreads, or spooned into toasted pittas with salad and/or some shredded cold meat.  Whenever I do a roast I allow for extra carrots so I can make this, but you can use whatever leftover roast roots are around, and if you have some roast onions or garlic, chuck those in too. Enjoy it alone, or get some frineds round to share – good food, good company & laughter are the best antidote I know to the January blues!

Roast Carrot Hummous
Serves 2-4

Ingredients:

  • 400g tin chickpeas, drained and rinsed
  • 100–300g roast carrots (but can mix in other roast roots, such as parsnips, celeriac and perhaps some roast onion
  • Juice of 1 small lemon
  • 2 tablespoons tahini or thick natural wholemilk yoghurt
  • 2 tablespoons olive or rapeseed oil, plus extra to finish
  • 1–2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
  • ½ teaspoon cumin seeds, bashed, or a good pinch of ground cumin, plus extra to finish (optional)
  • Good pinch of dried chilli flakes, plus extra to finish (optional)
  • Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method:

  1. In a food processor, whiz the chickpeas, carrots, lemon juice, tahini or yoghurt, oil, garlic, cumin and chilli flakes together until fairly smooth. If it’s too thick, thin with some hot water until you get the consistency you like.
  2. Season to taste with salt and pepper. To serve, spoon the hummus into a bowl or onto a plate, sprinkle with a good pinch of crushed cumin seeds and chilli flakes, if you like, and trickle on some olive or rapeseed oil.
  3. Sealed in a container, this hummus keeps well in the fridge for up to a week.

Tips and swaps

  • You can use leftover home-cooked chickpeas here if you like: 250g cooked peas is roughly equivalent to what you get in a 400g tin.
  • If you don’t have any chickpeas, cannellini or butter beans work well too

In season at this time of year:

Vegetables
Jerusalem Artichokes, Beetroot, Broccoli, Brussels Sprouts, Cabbage, Carrots, Cauliflower, Celeriac, Celery, Chicory, Garlic, Kale, Leeks, Mushrooms, Onions, Parsnips, Potatoes, Pumpkin, Red Cabbage, Shallots, Spinach, Swede, Turnips.

Fruit & Nuts
Apples, Pears (late – Concorde, Doyenne du Comice, Conference and Winter Nellis), Rhubarb (forced), Walnuts

Meat
Duck (end of season), Guinea Fowl, Hare, Partridge, Venison

Fish & Seafood
Brill, Clams, Cockles, Haddock, Halibut, Hake, John Dory, Lemon Sole, Salmon (coming into season), Monkfish, Mussels, Oyster, Plaice, Turbot

Suzanne is a professional chef, wife and mother who has lived in East Dulwich all her life!

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www.suzannejames.co.uk

This article first appeared in the January 2017 issue of SE22 magazine.