Roasted Pepper and Houmous Sandwich

Ok, first of all it does feel a bit weird to be back after such a long time. Weird and good at the same time. I was missing this for sure but did not seem to have any time at all for writing here. Even after I did manage to have some time, it was all spent in thinking about how to make the ‘comeback’. The first thought was an elaborate and grand dish to mark my return to the blog. But then I remembered what a friend once commented when I had made these sandwiches for the evening tea. Its very simple to get hold of elaborate complex recipes, there are a lot of sources for that. But what is more important and helpful, is to know about such simple, quick and easy to make dishes, with ingredients not too difficult to obtain but provide you with that much needed change in taste. Err.. she did not really use such a complex sentence but this was the gist of what she said.

So here it is. A simple sandwich, yet filling and delicious. Coming to each component of the sandwich, lets tackle the Hummus first and start with how it is spelt. It can be spelt both ways. So thats one confusion cleared. Now a very important question – home made or shop bought? While ‘ Home made is the best’ holds true for majority of the things, I somehow tend to deviate from this when it comes to houmous. I do have reasons for it and convenience tops the list. Most of the days, I make this sandwich for packed lunches in the morning and it is quite difficult for me to make fresh houmous at that time with so many other things to take care of. I know it can be made in advance and stored in the fridge but, I am not very comfortable with home made things (without anything to preserve them) being stored and then used. Another strong reason is that we have managed to locate the perfect houmous which tastes authentic and suits our taste buds perfectly. If you are in UK, you must at least once try the Tesco Organic Houmous, without any added flavours. We have tried various other brands but we find that this is the best.

I must mention something about houmous itself here. When I was first introduced to this ‘dip’, some 3 years back, I could not understand what all the hype was about. The husband wouldn't stop drooling over it and even the blog world seemed to have taken to it. All I could taste was a bit of sesame, some garlic and on rare occasions, chickpeas. To be fair, they are the main ingredients anyway. But the point is it seemed a bit bland to me at the beginning, with my taste buds used to tangy chaat, hot & flavoursome Punjabi food, fiery Maharashtrian/North Karnataka food (Misal, Jhunka etc) and the spicy Indo-Chinese, not to forget the red chilli tempered South Indian dishes (Sambhar, Puliogre and the likes). But this Middle East delicacy caught up with me and I found that some combinations with this dip are hard to beat.

One such combination is Roasted Peppers and Houmous. Now, again roasted Peppers can be home made or shop bought and I am still trying to decide which is preferable. The only thing that tips it towards the home made version is the presence of a huge amount of oil in the shop bought ones. Of course they are meant to preserve the peppers and I always drain it away before using them but it still makes a difference to me. Again convenience sometimes demands that I use the shop bought ones, but making them at home is also fairly simple. I have already mentioned the process in detail here (See step (a) and (b) of the recipe). You can use any Peppers but Red & Yellow peppers taste the best because of their slight sweetness.

Roasted Pepper and Houmous Sandwich

Makes 4 Sandwiches

Ingredients

• 4 Slices of Whole wheat Bread (This works the best, but you can have white bread too)
• About 1/2 cup Houmous
• 2 small to medium Red/Yellow peppers, roasted (If using shop bought, you need about 1 cup of pepper pieces)
• 1-2 Tblsp Black Olives (Optional)

There really is no recipe for this, all you have to do is assemble the sandwich now.

Take a slice of bread and generously spread houmous on it. Top it with a few roasted peppers and some of the olives (if using). Spread houmous on another slice and and top the sandwich. Cut into triangles. Repeat with the other two bread slices.

Thats it! As simple as it can get. Olives are completely optional, I personally dont have them in mine but the salty olives compliment the sweet peppers very well.

This Sandwich is on its way to the Sandwich Mela and just in time too!