Hummus sauce for fast one-pot pasta

Joe Yonan

One of the many things chickpeas (like so many other legumes) can do is turn into a sauce for coating noodles. Mash or puree them with a little olive oil and seasoning, thin that out with pasta cooking water, and you’ve got dinner.

Foodie Toni Okamoto has an even faster way. Instead of starting with chickpeas, she starts with hummus: already pureed, already seasoned, with plenty of flavour (hopefully) from tahini, lemon juice and olive oil. It’s one of the many great ideas in her latest book, “Plant-Based on a Budget: Quick & Easy”, and demonstrates one of her most important points: time is money.

Okamoto started her blog because she wanted to find the most affordable plant-based meals and share them with others who wanted to eat more healthfully without breaking the bank. Now she has shifted focus “to saving time. This creates more space in my life for the things I really love”.

Perhaps the most important reason for making this is that it’s so tasty. The hummus coats the noodles beautifully, while tomatoes in two forms ‒ sun-dried and fresh ‒ plus olives and basil give it more zings of flavour.

Hummus pasta with tomatoes and olives

Total time: 20 mins

4 servings

INGREDIENTS

• Fine salt
• 500g packet bucatini, spaghetti or your other favourite pasta
• 1 cup sun-dried tomatoes (not packed in oil)
• 1 cup hummus
• 1 cup chopped fresh tomatoes, plus more for garnish
• 2/3 cup sliced kalamata olives, plus more for garnish
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil, plus more for garnish
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, plus more to taste
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper, plus more to taste
• Extra-virgin olive oil, for serving

DIRECTIONS

• Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Cook the pasta according to package instructions until al dente.
• While the pasta is cooking, scoop out 2 cups of the boiling water from the pot and transfer to a small bowl. Add the sun-dried tomatoes and let them soak until tender, 5 to 10 minutes, then drain and chop.
• When the pasta is done, scoop out 1 cup of the cooking water, then drain. Return the cooked pasta and 1/2 cup of the reserved water to the same pot and stir in the sun-dried tomatoes, hummus, fresh tomatoes, olives, basil, lemon juice and pepper, tossing to combine. Add some or all of the remaining cooking water if needed to loosen the sauce. Taste, and season with salt, more lemon juice and/or pepper, if needed.
• Garnish with more tomatoes, olives and basil, and drizzle with olive oil. Serve warm, at room temperature or cold.

Adapted from "Plant-Based on a Budget: Quick and Easy" by Toni Okamoto (BenBella Books, 2023).

The Independent on Saturday