THE NEW
SALSA
powerful that even the best of
friends may easily turn against
each other if they suddenly find
themselves in opposite hummus
camps,” Ottolenghi and Tamimi
wrote. The arguments “can carry
on for hours,” they noted, with the
debaters delving into the minutia of whether hummus is better
served warm or at room temperature, smooth or chunky, topped
with fava beans or cumin and paprika, or nothing at all.
In a letter to The New York
Times at the height of the hummus
wars, Israeli food writer Janna Gur
went even further, calling Israel’s
fascination with hummus a “religion.” She noted that the most
treasured restaurants are invariably owned by Arabs, a phenomenon she traced to the early Zionist settlers who arrived in the Holy
Land determined to put the customs of the Diaspora behind them,
while embracing a new identity in
the Levant. They traded Yiddish
for Hebrew, yeshivas for plowshares, and matzoh balls and tsimmis for falafel balls and hummus.
“This love affair, that has been going on for decades, shows no signs
of dying,” Gur wrote.
Last summer, while traveling
in Israel, I visited as many of the
HUFFINGTON
06.30-07.07.13
hummusias as I could, hoping to
come to my own conclusions about
the craze. I was joined in this mission by my father, who moved from
Israel to New York in the early
1970s and has griped about the
quality of America’s hummus offerings ever since. Like many Israelis, he looks down not just on corporate hummus brands like Sabra
and Tribe, but also on local shops
that package their own hummus in
take-out containers. As far as he is
concerned, the religion of hummus
forbids packaging of any kind.
In the Middle East, hummus is
served fresh from the pot, on a big
communal plate dripped with olive oil and sprinkled with paprika
and cumin. The plate has to be big
enough and flat enough so that you
can comfortably wipe up the hummus with a pita, an activity that
my father refers to as “swiping.” He
insists that hummus should have a
subtle, earthy flavor, and disdains
spicy hummus, lemony hummus,
hummus with chipotles, hummus
with artichoke, hummus with basil,
sun-dried tomato or spinach, and
most of all, the dip referred to as
“black bean hummus.”
As he has pointed out many
times, hummus is the Arabic
word for chickpea; by definition,
hummus made of black beans
isn’t hummus.
In Israel, my father and I ate at