Courgette Hummus

My boyfriend's due home in a few days.  I've been willing my whole garden to grow lots of food for him with plant food in the form of worm tea, wishful thinking and lots of watering. The tomatoes are refusing to ripen but I do have a lot of squash growing out there.

On the courgette plant (as I was only successful at getting one seed to germinate) I pollinated one courgette and was letting it grow big as I wanted to save some seeds.  This plant is such a good cropper I do want to save some seed from it.  Unfortunately, it looks like the whole plant is putting all its energies into this one courgette and stalling on ripening more.  I decided it was time to remove this courgette to give the other fruit a chance.  It was approximately 25cm long.  I should have plenty of time to let courgettes grow later in the season when I grow tired of the glut.  Right now I need good crops available to cook for Matt in about 3 days time!

So what to do with a 300g courgette?  I hit my favourite seasonal cookbook "Grown in Britain Cook Book" which lists its recipes by crop group.  I stumbled on a recipe for pumpkin hummus and this gave me the inspiration for courgette hummus.

I'd never made hummus before.  I love eating hummus but as chickpeas are imported to the UK I have avoided making it in the past.  But I thought, just this once I would make some at home and bought a bag of dried chickpeas on my last trip to the shops.  So I had already rehydrated the chickpeas when I was trying to think what to do with the big courgette - now I could give it a local twist.

I started by chopping 3 garlic cloves in the food mixer.

Then chopped courgette went into the mixer.

I had no idea how much water courgettes contain!  Still it made wonderful courgette puree!

Courgette puree and chopped garlic

 Next, I put 200g chickpeas in the food mixer

Pureed chickpeas

 Next step, I combined the garlic, courgette and chickpeas together.

Mixing the courgette, chickpeas and garlic

And finally the best bit.. it was time for the seasoning: Tahini, lemon juice and paprika to taste.  Followed by a few good blobs of olive oil.

And here's what the finished result looked like...

Courgette Hummus

Not bad for my first go!

Great with some soldiers of home baked bread or even slice up spare raw squash - perfect for a bit of  crunch.

Ingredients:
200g chickpeas
300g courgette (or a medium sized squash - I wouldn't worry about the weight being too exact)
3 cloves of garlic
Table spoon Tahini (adjust quantity to personal taste)
2 Table spoons Lemon juice (adjust quantity to personal taste)
3 Table spoons Olive Oil/Rapeseed Oil
A few pinches of Paprika (adjust quantity to personal taste)

Squash Flower Salad

Its squash or cucurbit season in my garden. Well it really started at the beginning of July but its cranking up to full swing now which is amazing.  Every day something to eat from the garden - and now we have some sunshine maybe the tomatoes will finally turn yellow or red (depending on the varieties).

In the midst of my tomato impatience, I have my lovely squash plants to keep me company and to keep me fed.  Patty pans, large squash, gem squash and courgette.  The patty pans and courgettes give the best flowers and I like to add these to my salads, but today as I have a bit of a glut of flowers I decided to make a flower salad.

It is the most basic of salads as garden fresh salad doesn't need much preparation... but I divided the squash petals removing the sex part of the flower (which will go to my wormery) and placed them in a bowl, I added a handful of nasturtium leaves for some peppery flavour and some borage flowers. 

Borage is said to having a destressing effect so I like to add it to my salads, not that I am stressed with all the gardening but it might be thanks to the borage flowers!