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Welcome to entry #5 and oh boy have I got a story for you about this particular recipe. If you don’t know what this is all about then you need to get with the program and go ahead and read this page and then you need to submit a recipe to me! Only one month left!

So my very beautiful and wonderful friend Mish promised me that she had this awesomely amazing beetroot hummus that she was going to submit for the purposes of the competition. She warned me that it sounded a little odd, but promised that it was easy and delicious.

Oh boy. Where to begin with the calamity that shall forever be known as The Great Beetroot Hummus Disaster.

Everything started off okay, I assembled the ingredients (after toasting the cumin seeds I discovered that our pestle & mortar had gone walk-abouts so I literally ground the toasted cumin seeds with a wooden spoon, a plastic pot and sheer brute force – I then found the pestle & mortar tucked away in a cupboard 4 hours later), boiled the beetroot for 40mins, put everything into our brand-spanking-new blender attachment of our brand-spanking-new Kenwood Prospero Compact Food Mixer, hit the on switch and… nothing happened. I fiddled some more and still couldn’t get it to work. So I transferred it to another container, got out the handy little hand blender, turned it on and… nothing happened. The engine whirred but no mechanics moved. I unplugged it and studied it. The mechanism was stuck and was not loosening up any time soon.

I then spent the next hour trying to make the Kenwood-bloody-machine work. Finally, success, something was moving! I put everything back into the blender function and turned it on, it was actually working! Awesome! Then as it started getting to the end of its puree time I noticed the beetroot hummus was leaking out of the blender attachment. I turned it off and figured it was done anyway, time to remove the blender.

I took the blender off the machine and the bottom of the blender came off and beetroot hummus went everywhere. Seriously. EVERYWHERE. There was beetroot hummus on the table, there was beetroot hummus running down the sides of the bloody-stupid-terribly-manufactured-Kenwood-freakin’-machine, there was beetroot hummus on my hands, on my dress, on my face… At this point I grabbed a bowl and started frantically scooping beetroot hummus into it and then spent the next hour cleaning up beetroot hummus from the inside of the goddamn-Kenwood-freakin’-machine.

Another forty minutes later and the sweet potato fries that accompany this easy (if you have a blender that works properly and doesn’t explode) dish were ready. Forty minutes that should’ve taken twenty.

So despite the fact that this beetroot hummus is really yummy and you should definitely make it, I mean, look at that AWESOME colour, I will not be making this again. At least not until we throw that stupid-bloody-Kenwood-piece-of-muck into the dump and get a food processor that doesn’t mess about or explode when you remove it from its base. That would be nice. Total time it should take you to make this? 2 hours. Time it took me to make it? 3 1/2 hours. Thanks for the recipe Mish, it really is lovely! I’m just a massive retard, apparently.

Beetroot Hummus & Sweet Potato Fries

Ingredients
(For Hummus)
500g raw beetroot
80ml olive oil, plus 1 tbsp for frying
1 large onion, chopped roughly
1 tbsp cumin seeds, toasted and ground
400g tin chickpeas, drained
1 tbsp tahini
80g plain Greek yoghurt
2-3 garlic cloves
60ml lemon juice
125ml veggie stock

(For Fries)
2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into wedges
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp chilli powder
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp ground cumin

Method
1. Scrub the beetroot and boil until soft – about 40 mins. Cool and peel.
2. Heat 1 tbsp olive oil in frying pan and cook the onion until soft. Add the ground cumin at the end and stir well to coat.
3. Chop the beetroot and place in a blender with the onion, chickpeas, tahnini, yoghurt, garlic, lemon juice and stock and process until smooth.
4. Keep the motor running and add the olive oil in a thin steady stream. Remove to a bowl and cool.
5. Meanwhile pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees C.
6. Dress the wedges with the 2 tbsp olive oil, chilli powder, turmeric, smoked paprika and ground cumin. Make sure they’re coated well and then lay flat on a baking tray.
6. Bake the wedges in the oven for about 20-25 mins or until crisp.
7. Serve the wedges with the hummus (if your blender hasn’t exploded and covered you and your entire kitchen in bright red beetroot hummus. If it has, throw away your blender – it’s clearly very poorly designed. Don’t buy Kenwood.)

Until next time, peace and love.

Jax x