Chickpea hummus is delicious but for the smoothest creamiest result at home you’ve got to try making hummus with split peas! With no skins to worry about, the split peas blend to a very smooth consistency very easily.

Ingredients

1 cup yellow split peas

2 cups water

1 ½ teaspoons salt (or stock powder or garlic salt)

2 teaspoons cider vinegar (or lemon juice)

1 to 2 tablespoons tahini

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

½ teaspoon ground cumin

Garnish:

Chilli oil (or vegetable oil and chilli flakes/paprika)

Small cubes of Angel Food vegan feta

Instructions

1.        Cook the split peas in a pot or pressure cooker, until very soft. If you’re cooking them in a pot you may need to add more water to stop them sticking.

2.        Once cooked and cooled, blend with the rest of the ingredients (but not the garnish!) in a food processor until super smooth and creamy.

3.        Serve topped with chilli oil and Angel Food feta.

This recipe makes a whopping 600g of hummus and as well as being perfect for dipping, spreading and dolloping, it’s lovely stirred through hot pasta (don’t completely drain the pasta - leave a bit of the cooking water in and it will blend with the hummus as you stir it in, creating a lovely creamy sauce). You could of course reduce the batch size, or freeze any excess.

INGREDIENTS INFO AND SUGGESTED ALTERNATIVES

Here we’ve kept the seasoning simple so the subtle flavour of the peas shines through. But it’s a perfect palette for getting creative with flavours, so don’t hold back. You could add curry powder, for example, and replacing the oil and tahini with coconut cream would be delicious too.

The yellow and green split peas available to us are from the same plant as fresh (or more likely frozen!) green peas. Fresh peas are harvested early, but those destined to become split peas are allowed to dry on the plant, and are therefore starchier.

Like all legumes, split peas are high in protein and low in fat. They also contain impressive amounts of dietary fibre: 26 grams of fibre per 100 grams of split peas.

Split peas work beautifully in this dip recipe because they’re skinless, so easy to blend to a smooth creamy result. You could substitute red lentils, which are also skinless.

AROUND THE WORLD

The pease pudding in the children’s rhyme (Pease pudding hot, Pease pudding cold, Pease pudding in the pot, Nine days old) doesn’t sound very attractive but it was a common meal in medieval Europe, made from yellow split peas. Today it is still common in parts of the English Midlands, where it is served with fish and chips instead of the traditional mushy peas (which are actually almost identical, but green in colour).

In Beijing cuisine there is a chilled sweet snack made from yellow split peas, which may be flavoured with osmanthus blossoms and dates.

And "fáva" is a Greek appetiser or mezze dish, made with pureed yellow split peas and topped with capers.