Thursday, May 17, 2012

THE JOY OF JOYVA

I'm still working on making some dishes from Dr. Andrew Weil's 2011 newsletters.  Last week, I tried the recipe for homemade hummus.  This is a really easy recipe because it has just a few ingredients--canned chickpeas, sesame tahini, lemon juice, cumin, garlic, olive oil and a little water.  And it requires no cooking.  What it did require was a food processor though, which I didn't have and I didn't realize that I didn't have it until all the ingredients were in the bowl.  I had forgotten that I had given my food processor away to my daughter since I didn't use it much.  (I had found that I prefer to chop vegetables by hand, considering it to be therapeutic, therefore not needing the big machine on my counter).

So when it came time to puree the chickpeas with the other ingredients, I really needed to use my noodle to make the hummus.   I tried to use a potato masher.  Didn't work.  At all.  I then tried a blender.  Have you ever tried to use a blender to puree something solid?  I found that it just doesn't work.  Blenders are great for blending liquids, but the blender didn't do a thing to smooth out the beans.  I tried adding more lemon juice and water, but it didn't budge.  I tried futzing around with using a chopstick to move the stuff around in the bottom, and all I got was a chopped up chopstick.  So just when I was about to dump the whole concoction into the trash, I remembered that I had an immersion blender.

This is a great, inexpensive kitchen gizmo for blending/pureeing items right in the mixing bowl or the cooking pot.  I use the immersion blender for making butternut squash soup and potato soup.  And now it has a new use--for making hummus.  BTW, my daughter has since returned the food processor back to me since she said she barely uses it.  And I gave her a new immersion blender!!

But back to the hummus.  I mentioned that one of the key ingredients is sesame tahini.  I bought this at the supermarket, right by the packaged hummus containers.  I only saw the Joyva brand and I admit the turbaned-guy on the logo looked a little scary to me.  If there was another brand available, I probably would have bought it to avoid that Aladdin icon.




But, when I opened the can, the delicious scent of the sesame paste opened my memory.  What came to mind immediately was the scent and taste of the sesame confection halvah, and with that, the memory of my maternal grandparents, Ruth & Harry (Nan & Pop, to me).  


The aroma of that tahini brought me back 50 years to my grandparents kitchen, with them taking the halvah out of the package and slicing it into generous chunks.  And the 3 of us sitting at the kitchen table enjoying the halvah (though we pronounced it "hal-a-vah") and each other.  I could practically taste the halvah again, and vividly remembered their kitchen, their cabinets, the window looking out to the backyard, even the view of the neighbor's house over the kitchen sink.  All this love and joy from taking a whiff of the Joyva tahini.  I have just found out that Joyva halvah is still being made--by the Joyva company!  How did I miss seeing the halvah in the store all these years?
So, if there's a bottom line here, it's to eat more beans, use sesame tahini for its healthful and delicious fats, and, always, to remember and honor the people that have been important to you.  Nan & Pop were the best.  They lived right downstairs from my family and I saw them every single day while I was growing up. They treated me like a princess.    And I'm going to have some halvah in their honor.