Hummus and Pita
Who serves hummus and pita with cucumbers and tomatoes at a birthday party? Probably everybody in Lebanon, but in northwest Wisconsin? I’ll tell you who serves the hummus: I do.
While my lovely life(I meant to type “wife” but life is fitting) was driving her sister to the airport on Sunday morning, I awoke with the birthday boys (Gus 6, and Griffen almost 4) and started prepping for the birthday gathering at 2 p.m. I was supposed to clean, but I am always drawn to the kitchen like so many iron filings to a magnet. PITA, the kitchen screamed, make PITA for the party. Alright, pita it is. What a simple, basic, comforting food to prepare. Here is what I do:
Pre-heat your oven to 500F. Take 1 cup of bread flour, mix in 2 tsps. active dry yeast, 2 tsps. sea salt in a medium bowl. Measure 1 cup of hot water and add 2 TBSP good olive oil, swirl together and stir into the flour mix. Slowly add another 1 1/2 cups of flour to this mix and knead until a smooth elastic dough is formed. If you have a stand mixer, just dump this all together and knead with the bread hook for 5 minutes or so.
Once the dough is ready, flatten it into a round 8 to 9 inches in diameter, and cut into 8 even pie shaped wedges. Roll these into balls with your palms, cover with a damp tea towel, and let rest for about 30 mins.
While the dough was resting, I started rooting through the refrigerator for something to serve with the pita. Nothing. So I checked the pantry. Aha!! Garbanzo beans! So, hummus is now on the menu. Do I have tahini? No. Do any stores in the area carry tahini? Yes. Are they open on Sunday morning? No. In times like these we must press on, adapt, and overcome our obstacles. I did have stuffed spanish olives, green onions, and garlic, plus olive oil. So I took one can of garbanzo beans (drained), 3 olives, 3 green onion with stalk, 2 cloves of garlic, a pinch or two of oregano, and about 1/4 cup of olive oil (just enough to make the mix fluid) and chucked it all into the food processor. Initial taste tests confirmed it was good.
By now the dough had risen, and the oven was hot. I took the dough balls and flattened them with my hand, and then with a rolling pin, rolled them into 8″ discs, about 1/8″ thick. I used my new pizza peel, lightly floured, and slid the discs two at a time onto the baking stone in the 500F oven. Pita is without a doubt the most exciting bread you can make. The discs began to puff within seconds: the steam separates the dough which blows up like a rugby ball, forming the pita “pocket”. After 3 minutes the two pitas are slightly browned and are ready for removal. Place the rounds on a wire rack to cool. Note: you will need to gently flatten the pita while it is still warm. I simply stack the pita’s on top of each other, which does the trick.
To serve, I sliced the pita into 8 triangles per round with the hummus on the side. I also sliced fresh, ripe tomatoes and cucumbers drizzled with olive oil and vinegar. Christopher’s daughters combined to finish off the cucumbers and pita by the end of the party.
Oh yeah, we had cake and ice cream too, much to the relief of the birthday boys.
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