I first tasted hummus in Grand Cheese Bazaar , the pioneering food shop started by Karen Anand in Mumbai in 1990. The cheese was nice, but what was great was this creamy, tangy, deeply tasty mash of chickpeas , garlic, olive oil and thick tahina sesame paste. It worked like a sauce, but was substantial like a spread and less rich-tasting than cheese or paté, so you could eat more.
With some good bread or rotis, it made for a full meal. All I knew was that it was Middle Eastern , so when I went to spend a few weeks in Egypt, I looked forward to eating a lot more of it. But for Egyptians, the pulses that mattered most was ful, slow-cooked fava beans.
Chickpeas (which is literally what hummus means) weren’t as popular, either whole or mashed. I searched in supermarkets, but found only some sad tasting, canned hummus. I was told that most people made it at home, or ordered it in restaurants as part of the starters called mezze .
In Lilia Zaouali study Medieval Cuisine in the Islamic World , she notes a recipe for mashed chickpeas mixed with vinegar, preserved lemons, cinnamon, pepper and ginger dating back to a 13th century Egyptian treatise. This also seems to be around the time when tahina gets mentioned by itself — before this, sesame seeds mainly seemed to have been crushed into oil, leaving a drier residue. Some culinary genius realised that adding more oil and water would give a creamy paste, which was a valuable ingredient in itself.
And then it was mixed with chick .