Hummus has origins from the Middle East, today embraced by many in Western society. The Egyptians claim the heritage title of hummus origins sometime in the 13^th Century. However, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey (Türkiye) also claim that they are the founders of this versatile dish, sometimes its the Greeks also. The key ingredients are chickpeas, garlic, tahini, lemon and spices. These days, humus is often found at a party or in the family packed lunchbox. It’s the perfect healthy snack high in protein with about 10 grams in this recipe. It has to be said, we would never buy shop bought hummus again. It is super easy with few ingredients. Our generational Yemeni spice mix 'Hawaij'  is literally a nod to all the countries above. Rich in an alchemy of cumin, caraway and coriander and other alchemy. If you are a pursuit then you will sadly be missing out. 

We had read some blogs that suggested that when making humus from scratch, you need to deshell all of the chickpeas. A moment of madness took hold one of us and yes, we did. The blog suggestions were 10 minutes from our research, but honestly it was more like 35 minutes. The effort isn’t really worth it having now tried both avenues. Furthermore, just buy the tins or jars of chickpeas. Like baked beans, you pay for what you get. Don’t skimp on quality and you are half way there. You will need a great quality tahini such as (Belazu). This can be easily bought online or instore. Tahini can be used in lots of other recipes.  It is possible to make humus without tahini, but we simply love it. The investment in good quality tahini is worth it and it really does goes far.

Method 

1. Use a food processer or a hand blender and bowl. Combine the tahini, Lemon Juice, the water/aqufaba in a bowl and blend for 1 minute to get a nice creamy texture.
2. Add the olive oil, minced garlic, salt and the Hawaij and blend for a further 30 seconds.
3. Add half of the chick peas blend all together for 30 seconds and then a further 30 seconds for the remainder of the chickpea quantity. N.B You might want to leave a tablespoon of chickpeas on the side for garnish. 
4. At this stage the humus might still be too thick. There are two routes you can take with this. Add a splash of water or for a little trick to improve on the consistency an ice cube or two. Do one or the other, until you get the right consistency. This further blending process will also help eliminate any chickpeas that have been missed in the blending process. The texture can change depending if you use water/ice or the aquafaba from the offset. For clarity we used the aquafaba from the offset and it was amazing for the finished result. Be sure to taste the humus now. Make a decision if you need to add more sea salt, remembering that the aquafaba in itself is salty. Give one more quick whizz for a final blend.
5. Before you serve you can sprinkle a couple of pinches of the Hawaij over the hummus, just for aesthetics and also you could add another splash of oil. This is down to choice. Sometimes less is more. You can also add some loose chickpeas for decoration or some freshly chopped coriander or some toasted pine nuts. Let’s face it these days there are no purists when it comes to the various humus flavours you might come across.