By The anxiety has been building. I can feel it the way you feel weather changing — a pressure in my chest, a vigilance that does not have a specific object. Everything is fine. Miya is fine. She is eating and sleeping and growing and doing all the things babies are supposed to do. But my brain keeps scanning for threats, running through scenarios, constructing disasters from nothing. What if she stops breathing in her sleep? What if the formula is contaminated? What if I drop her? What if, what if, what if. The what-ifs are an ocean and I am treading water.
I called my therapist. She said this is the postpartum anxiety she warned me about — my existing generalized anxiety, amplified by hormones and sleep deprivation and the cosmic weight of being responsible for a human life. She adjusted my medication slightly. I am grateful for the medication. I am grateful every single day. Dad would say Nakamuras do not take pills. Dad is wrong about this, and I have spent twenty years being certain he is wrong, and I will spend twenty more if I have to.
I cooked as therapy this week — Fumiko's nimono, the simmered vegetable dish she makes with daikon, carrots, and konnyaku in a dashi-soy broth. It is a slow dish. You cut the vegetables into careful pieces, you simmer them gently, you wait. The waiting is the point. My anxiety wants everything to happen fast, wants to compress time into a single panicked moment. Nimono says: slow down. The carrots will soften when they are ready. You cannot rush a carrot.
Brian came home late from a work event smelling like beer and good cheer. He held Miya and made funny faces and she stared at him with the solemn concentration of a baby who has not yet learned that funny faces are supposed to be funny. He is good with her in small doses. He is good with everything in small doses. The problem is that parenthood is not a small dose. Parenthood is the whole bottle, every day, forever.
Spring keeps unfolding outside. The azaleas are blooming in the neighborhood yards, absurdly pink. I took Miya for a walk in the stroller and pointed things out to her — flowers, dogs, a man playing guitar on a porch. She slept through all of it. But I was awake. I was noticing things again. And noticing feels like the beginning of returning to the person I was before the blur.
That walk — the azaleas, the sleeping baby, the slow return of my own noticing — put me in the mood to cook something unhurried, something that asked nothing of me except patience. I thought about Solomonov’s hummus, the one that starts the night before with chickpeas soaking in water and baking soda, the one that refuses to be rushed. It felt right: you soak, you simmer, you wait, and then you keep simmering past the point where you think they’re done. Miya slept in the bassinet while I whisked the tehina, loosening it tablespoon by tablespoon, and I realized this is what cooking gives back to me right now — not speed, not efficiency, but the quiet permission to stand still and make something smooth out of something hard.
Michael Solomonovs Perfect Hummus Tehina
Prep Time: 1 hr | Cook Time: 1 hr 30 min | Total Time: 2 hr 30 min | Servings: 3
Ingredients
- 1 cup dried chickpeas
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 1/2 cups Basic Tehina Sauce (recipe below)
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
- Paprika
- Chopped or torn fresh parsley leaves
- Olive oil, for drizzling
- 1 head garlic
- 3/4 cup lemon juice (from 3 lemons)
- 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
- 2 generous cups tehina
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
Instructions
- Soak the chickpeas. Place the chickpeas in a large bowl with 1 teaspoon of the baking soda and cover with water. (The chickpeas will double in volume, so use more water than you think you need.) Soak the chickpeas overnight at room temperature. The next day, drain the chickpeas and rinse under cold water.
- Simmer until tender. Place the chickpeas in a large pot with the remaining 1 teaspoon baking soda and add cold water to cover by at least 4 inches. Bring the chickpeas to a boil over high heat, skimming off any scum that rises to the surface. Lower the heat to medium, cover the pot, and continue to simmer for about 1 hour, until the chickpeas are completely tender. Then simmer them a little more. (The secret to creamy hummus is overcooked chickpeas: don’t worry if they are mushy and falling apart a little.) Drain.
- Blend the garlic and lemon. As the chickpeas cook, make the Basic Tehina Sauce. Break up the head of garlic with your hands, letting the unpeeled cloves fall into a blender. Add the lemon juice and 1/2 teaspoon of the salt. Blend on high for a few seconds until you have a coarse puree. Let the mixture stand for 10 minutes to let the garlic mellow.
- Strain the mixture. Pour the mixture through a fine-mesh strainer set over a large mixing bowl, pressing on the solids to extract as much liquid as possible. Discard the solids. Add the tehina to the strained lemon juice in the bowl, along with the cumin and 1 teaspoon of the salt.
- Whisk the tehina sauce. Whisk the mixture together until smooth (or use a food processor), adding ice water, a few tablespoons at a time, to thin it out. The sauce will lighten in color as you whisk. When the tehina seizes up or tightens, keep adding ice water, bit by bit (about 1 1/2 cups in total), whisking energetically until you have a perfectly smooth, creamy, thick sauce.
- Season and store. Taste and add up to 1 1/2 teaspoons more salt and cumin if you like. If you’re not using the sauce immediately, whisk in a few tablespoons of ice water to loosen it before refrigerating. The tehina sauce will keep a week refrigerated, or it can be frozen for up to a month.
- Puree the hummus. Combine the chickpeas, 1 1/2 cups Basic Tehina Sauce, remaining salt and cumin in a food processor. Puree the hummus for several minutes, until it is smooth and uber-creamy. Then puree it some more!
- Serve. To serve, spread the hummus in a shallow bowl, dust with paprika, top with parsley and more tehina sauce if you like, and drizzle generously with oil.
Nutrition (per serving)
Not available.