Hummous or Hummus or Hamos or…

Houmous or hommos or hommus or hummos or humus…

To me, it’s all the same thing. A great dish.

Hummous is a Middle Eastern dish made predominantly from chickpeas (aka garbanzo beans, gram) and other ingredients like tahini (sesame paste), olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, and seasonings. Its origins are unclear, although, according to Wikipedia:

Charles Perry, co-author of Medieval Arab Cookery notes that owing to hummus bi tahina being an everyday staple, and because of the lack of Arab recipe books published between the 14th and 20th centuries, no recipes documenting this food’s early ingredients have been found. He says the nearest medieval example recorded in a 13th century Arab cookbook, Kitab Wasf al-Atima al-Mutada is Hummus kasa, which substitutes vinegar for lemon, includes extra herbs and adds walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds and pistachios.

There are, of course, variations on hummous which include roasted red bell peppers, sundried tomatoes, roasted eggplant, tomatos and basil, and, well, really, there are quite probably hundreds to thousands of variations.

This is where I admit that I’ve only ever made one type–a fairly run-of-the-mill classic sort that we love–with only a few variations on it. But I’m thinking that, one of these days, I’m going to have to give some others a go just to see what I think. And because experimenting is fun.

Hummous

Ingredients

• 2 cups chickpeas, cooked
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 tablespoons lime juice
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 3 tablespoons tahini (sesame paste)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cumin
• 1 1/2 teaspoons red chilli pepper powder or cayenne or paprika

Directions

1. Mash chickpeas. Add remaining ingredients and blend.
2. Alternately, if you’re using a food processor, toss all ingredients in and whir-whir until it’s blended.

We like garlic, so we add a fair bit, sometimes more like 6 cloves. If yours is not a garlic family, add less or consider adding roasted garlic instead so the taste is milder. Same with all the other ingredients – if your family doesn’t like tahini or red chilli pepper powder or ___, decrease or omit. This recipe is so completely flexible.

I have, at times, added other things, like curd (local version of yoghurt) in the place of tahini, or added chopped parsley, and that has gone over very well as well.

Hummous can be frozen–I tend to make pretty large batches and freeze half or more of it.

I usually serve it with naan and other naan-suitable foods like eggplant dip, shish kebabs, falafel, or even curried chicken or fish. It can be used as a dressing in wraps, shwarama/shwarama variants, or salads like potato or pasta.

If you haven’t made this before, give it a try! It’s a lot easier to make than you think!

Tagged as: chickpeas, hummous, Middle Eastern cuisine