"I guess I could call it my own fault for taking this as a two-hummus pot luck dish to a Christmas Party buffet without trying it first and without reading the reviews by all of you other cooks out there. If it had been a contest this hummus came in dead last. It was floating in oil! I should have trusted my judgment that 3 cups can't be right. Will I try it again now that I know 1/3 cup is a better measure? Well, I'm not sure because frankly I added all the oil thinking that that much chili powder was going to have to be diluted by something or it would turn out way to grainy. Fortunately, the second hummus was the Barefoot Contessa's recipe and happily every bite of it was gone. I took almost all of the Penguin hummus home with me again and plan to use it as a starter for a pot of chili.

"This hummus was the winner of a two hummus dish I took to a Christmas Party Pot Luck. (Hummus is great for a buffet table because it survives at room temperature so well - no need to pack it in ice or keep rewarming, and so on.) Ina's recipe is so silky and and has a very attractive nearly white color unusual for usually off-brown colored hummus. I even doubled the number of cans of garbanzos and only adjusted the seasonings slightly - "a little extra lemon juice never hurts," as Clarissa, one of the Two Fat Ladies (British) chefs I love, always says. One note of caution: I did a kind of taste test of my own on different cans of garbanzos. There is an inexpensive one-dollar-a-can variety available at the massive supermarkets that tastes like aluminum cans frankly. Better to stick to the organic varieties in more Organic type markets in this case.