To think if Yotam Ottolenghi is going to complain about authenticity of olive oil in hummus, he shouldn't put out nonsense like Thai lentil soup

[AgaPanthers]

Seriously mate, if Mary Berry wants olive oil in her hummus it's up to her.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2789159/yotam-ottolenghi-attacks-great-british-bake-star-s-mary-berry-s-recipe-hummus-inclusion-olive-oil.html

You won't find any lentils in Thailand either.
www.westernlivingmagazine.com/2014/10/08/thai-red-lentil-soup/

Lol. This is such a first world problem, middle class thread.

Typical MN thread, then, camel

I lived for a little while with some Palestinians in Jerusalem. Humous was a staple in their diet, these people know their humous. Always serviced with a drizzle of olive oil on top and a sprinkle of what I took to be paprika. It should have olive oil - yum, yum!

CotedAzur There is no need to be so snooty about using tinned chickpeas. Quite frankly I CBA to cook chickpeas and see nothing wrong in using tinned.

I used to cook dried chickpeas, but after ruining several pans that had burned dry I stopped bothering. Also having a tin of chick peas handy is useful for so many quick meals.

I use tinned stuff, too, on occasion.

This is about what a recipe is: A method to cook something from basic ingredients. I wouldn't expect the recipe for a sauce to tell me how many tomatoes to grate, not say "Open a can of tomato juice", for example.

If you don't have the time you might want to use tinned tomato juice instead, but the recipe should teach you to prepare it all yourself.

Most recipes using tomatoes for a sauce actually recommend using tinned tomatoes anyway because our anaemic English tomatoes are too sour and acidic.

I have a lovely cypriot cook book bought in Cyprus called Kopiaste. Written for younger generations of cypriots living abroad.
The recipe for Houmous calls for a spiral dent to made and olive oil poured onto it.

I use tinned chickpeas too, I'm such a Mary Berry.

Is that rhyming slang?

Takeupthenorthernmountain I was going to post the exact same thing

Oh, just seen she missed out tahini - no, no, no!

Oh Yotam should so get over himself. I lived in Israel and still buy the Israeli hummous I used to get there (Yarden). One of the ingredients is olive oil.

We must be using different cooking books, Bunbaker. I have none that mention a single ingredient out of a can.

I don't know what you mean re sour tomatoes. I cook with them all the time and they are perfectly fine. Add a bit of sugar if they are not to your taste.

"We must be using different cooking books, Bunbaker. I have none that mention a single ingredient out of a can."

Really! Most Italian recipes use tinned tomatoes. I have loads of recipe books that use tinned tomatoes as an ingredient, and quite a few that use tinned tuna/anchovies or pulses.

Why on earth wouldn't anyone want to use tinned chickpeas? All they are is cooked chickpeas! Nothing else is added, Peas (60%), Water, Salt other than salt but someone else has done the hard work for you, of soaking and cooking. And it can be hard to get chickpeas as tender as you need them for hummus.

Avoiding cans when there's no need to is just being a food snob.

Proper link to KTC chickpeas ingredients

There are lots of good canned foods:

tomatoes
any kind of bean
anchovies
tuna
sweetcorn
pineapple
peach slices/halves
sardines
chestnuts
corned beef
condensed milk
coconut milk
mushy peas
soup
confit duck

Hear hear BIWI. Life is too short for some things isn't it.

Yes, really, Bunbaker. I live about 15 minutes from Italy and can assure you that Italians have cooking books that don't involve tinned tomato sauces.

He needs to get a life.

BIWI - If you read my posts before writing yours, you would see that I also use tinned products. My point was that I would expect a recipe to teach how to cook a dish from scratch, not "Open a can of this, then add it to a can of that, etc".

'The Silver Spoon', so-called bible of Italian cooking has lots of recipes using tinned tomatoes. In fact they give you comparable amounts in the recipes (500g fresh = 400g tinned).

Hummus is variations on a theme. It's common all round the Med and ME, and is subtly different in most places. So Yotam is right, and Mary is right, and Claudia is right. But only Yotam is rude.

YY.

That's the beauty of cooking.
There's no ingredients police knocking on your door.

But why, Cote?

It isn't hard to cook chickpeas, but it is time-consuming, and tinned chickpeas are not a compromise in any way.

It's also massively assumptive that just because people use tins, that they don't know how to cook the original ingredient!

CoreDAzur Most British cookery books with Italian recipes in use tinned tomatoes. All recipes I have seen that have Bolognese sauce use tinned tomatoes, TV chefs use them, recipes on the internet use them.

You live somewhere that grows gorgeous tomatoes. It is hardly surprising that local recipes won't use tinned tomatoes.

Some of the recipes on this Italian food website use tinned tomatoes.
Gennaro Contaldo, Antonio Carluccio et all on the web all use tinned tomatoes in some of their recipes.