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Summary on the 2002-01-20 Session in E Angel Court. This session's lead developemental
team were John Fremlin and Thomas Köppe, Mr Köppe is reporting for the
Trinity Humous Society.
Humous making at Cambridge reached new levels of sophistication this sunday when at Trinity College - under the eyes of an expectant crowd - the Trinity Humous Society embarked on a completely new and innovative humous research program. The first of a series of sessions saw the staging of a diverse variety of samples taken out of the main production line that were individually modified. This quasi-parallel test production allowed the engineering team to create and interact with a much wider range of outcomes than ever before.
In detail, there were three subsamples taken from one of the earliest stages of the main production, which consisted only of soaked chickpeas, some of which were already blended.
In the first sub-refinement, a small quantity of Tehina was added to the ground chickpeas, and tremendous amounts of Olive Oil were supposed to contribute to the aimed for consistence. However the unbalancing influence of the oil's flavor was underestimated, and even corrections with more chickpeas and some citric acid (naturally contained in lemon juice) failed to change much of the outcome.
More successfully, the second sample was prepared with, again, some small amount of Tehina, however this time a large amount of Olive Oil was refrained from being added, and in its stead water was put to use. While some sunflower oil was latter blended in for mysterious reasons, the whole blend looked a lot more like some storebought brand that an inofficial subcommittee of the Society evaluated in an highly inofficial and non-disclosed preliminary meeting some days earlier.
At that stage it became evident that the (as later referred to) "perfect humous" was not that easily to be achieved by the means at our disposal - the basic taste of our chickpeas was simply too far from what we were aiming for. In an instant executives' conference it was therefore duefully concluded to abandon the idea of immitation for the time being and to fully focus on creating a pleasing and satisfactory outcome for ourselves.
Thus the third and final sample to be processed in a small quantity consisted in medium amounts of water and sunflower oil, along with the usual amount of Tehina, some lemon juice, a bit of paprica and some additional salt. This was decided upon to be an indeed quite acceptable result.
Due to internal management requirements, a short break was proclaimed at this point. Humous making resumed when Mr Fremlin, using all the experience gained so far, converted the considerably large amount of remaining raw-humous into a delicious product of our own making by using reasonable additions of the aforementioned ingredients. Consumption of this day's humous was a special pleasure with some fine original pita-bread at hand, and it proved a welcome precursor to a further joyful dinner.
At this point it shall be remarked that the initially created pre-humous contained not only blended soaked chickpeas, but also already some Tehina, and for reasons beyond immediate comprehension, some chili, whose indeed remarkable, slightly pungent effect on the whole production line remained throughout the whole day.
Consideration about further procedings resulted in a landslide acceptance of the new lab technique, as well is in some thoughts about wether to actually boil or not boil the chickpeas while having them soak, since apparently boiling caused the peas to turn from their original white into some brownish color, which was one of the main differences of our humous to the aimed at "perfect humous".
The day ended happily over some delicious fried sausages with curry.
Thomas Köppe