Oh hey there, holiday season, where did you come from? I feel like I blinked sometime in mid-summer and woke up surrounded by tinsel twists and glittering lights...anyone else? Well, since we're here now, riding the Polar Express all the way to Christmastown with every Who from Whoville, let's talk about the most important seasonal baking of the year....COOKIES!
Pity the poor pumpkin. It gets dragged out and plopped into everything the instant the calendar page flips over from August to September, and it suffers a nonstop barrage of unlikely pairings pretty much straight through until December. Pumpkin spice latte! Pumpkin lager! Pumpkin breakfast cereal! Pumpkin yogurt and jello and risotto and air freshener and pet shampoo! ENOUGH. And then, poor pumpkin, it gets placed back on the shelf for the better part of a year and everyone forgets about it, unless it's to say something like, Ohhhhh no, not pumpkin, I am SO SICK OF FREAKING PUMPKIN. Hashtag BASIC.
Not me. I am a year round, card-carrying Friend of Pumpkin (currently organizing local chapters in a town near you).
All my hummuses (besides being a hilarious dip-themed idea for a soap opera) are pretty nontraditional stuff. In the past, I've made roasted beet hummus, rosemary white bean hummus, black bean hummus, carrot hummus, spiced sweet potato hummus, and this particular recipe for edamame hummus on countless occasions. Considering the word hummus itself stems from the Arabic word meaning "chickpeas," I'm not really sure any of these ought to actually be called hummus? All the same, this edamame version (with its lemon, garlic, olive oil and a hefty dose of tahini) actually comes closest to a traditional recipe, so I'm doubling down on its hummus status.
The most important thing you need to know about it is that it's delicious smeared on toasted black sesame & scallion flatbread, carrot sticks and radish slices, and it's so seductively fragrant you'll most likely start eating it out of the food processor while it's still warm. I rarely see a bowl survive to the "fully cooled & in need of storage" stage--especially now that I have a voracious baby who has claimed this as one of his favorite foods--which makes it one of my proudest accomplishments. Pair this with enough fresh veggies & bread and it's a meal in itself! Is "dip for dinner" a thing, or did we just invent that right this very second? YES, YES WE DID.
Let's talk about latkes. Crispy, crackling golden clouds of starchy goodness concealing a creamy, potato-and-onion center. Who DOESN'T love these? Although I didn't grow up with them as a traditional holiday treat, I actually feel a bit more free to mess around with the classic recipe than I would if my family were Jewish (no one wants to incur the wrath of elder relatives in the kitchen).