One of my favourite of Dad’s meals from when I was younger was his Middle Eastern mezze selection – spicy lamb mince with pine nuts, falafel, tabbouli, hummous, baba ghanoush, tzatziki or jajik, olives and feta served with flatbread for making DIY wraps or just mopping up the juices.
This Middle Eastern medley is now a regular part of my own dinner time repertoire, mainly because I like taking the leftovers to work for lunch. I often break it out for parties too because the mezze style is great for picking and dipping, mixing and matching, forking or wrapping.
Over the next week or two I am going to share all of the above recipes with you so you can create your own mezze selection, and where better to begin than with what is arguably the most well-known and ubiquitous of Middle Eastern mezze – hummous.
Hummous, hummus, hamos, hommos, hommus, houmous, hummos, humus, homos (yes, homos). However you spell it, the basic premise is the same: cooked chickpeas mashed or blended with tahini, lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper. Of course, there are hundreds of variations – some add cumin or paprika for a little spice, sumac for tang, parsley for garnish, others add roasted red peppers for colour and sweetness, some leave out the tahini, finding it too bitter. Experiment and find out what works for you.
I would be lying if I said that hummous was just as good with tinned chickpeas as freshly cooked ones, but the truth is that I use tins more often than not and the result is pretty good. For this reason I haven’t specified in the recipe – if you want to cook them yourself check out Stephanie Alexander’s advice on preparing and cooking chickpeas in my tips and techniques section, otherwise just use a tin.
Traditional recipes tend to use raw garlic, but I only add a small amount of raw garlic (roasting the remainder) because I find too much raw garlic can be unpleasantly spicy, not to mention the bad breath! You don't have to heat the oven to roast a few cloves of garlic - just place it skin on under a hot grill for 5 to 10 minutes, turning once.
This recipe makes one generous bowl, enough to serve with flatbread, Turkish bread or crudités as a starter or as part of a main mezze selection.
Ingredients
250g cooked chickpeas
2 cloves garlic, roasted
1 small clove garlic, roughly chopped
Juice ½ lemon, or to taste
1 tbsp tahini
3 tbsp medium olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
For spicy hummous
1 ½ tsp cumin
¼ tsp hot paprika
Method
Put the chickpeas, roast garlic and raw garlic in a food processor and blend to a rough paste. Add the rest of the ingredients and pulse till combined. Check the seasoning, adjusting as necessary; lemon and salt will be the main variables. For a smoother consistency, add a little extra olive oil or some cooking water from the chickpeas and blend for a little longer.