Convergent evolution. Funny stuff.
I like to cook eggs. Eggs are among the first things I really learned to cook well, and I definitely did it the hard way. (Remind me to tell you the story of the first time I cooked eggs, sometime.) I spent years learning how to make a good omelet - cooking, figuring out what went wrong, refining, practicing the flip, adjusting the batter, adjusting the pan. And when I was done - when I felt like I could make a great omelet every single time, regardless of circumstances, available ingredients (within reason) or anything else, someone pointed something out to me that caught me by surprise.
What I had developed wasn't an omelet at all; it was almost exactly, in fact, like an Italian frittata. Which is, admittedly, just an Italian omelet - but comes out a lot more like a crustless quiche than like a French omelet. Seems like somewhere along the line, someone else had done the same thing that I had, and had refined and perfected until they got something that was not really what they were reaching for at all. Not to be bold, but I think it's a heck of a lot better, to be honest. Actually, that shouldn't be surprising. After all, what I was doing was refining the recipe so that it fit my taste better and better; of course I think the end result tastes awesome.
When I was in Israel, I was sitting around my tiny, tiny kitchen one day thinking about what I might want to eat for dinner. I had half a plate of hummus left, as well as some chicken breasts. Feeling adventurous, I coated the chicken in the leftover hummus (well-mixed with the paprika and olive oil by now - you DID read my last post, right?) and fried it up. It tasted great, and I wound up making it fairly often.
Cut forward a year or two. I'm in law school, and a local diner - Sam's Cafe, a wonderful little greasy spoon on Walnut Street in Champaign, IL - decides to start doing a Lebanese menu on Friday evenings. The owners are both Lebanese, and they've been feeling a bit homesick. As for me, I've been feeling a bit home-away-from-homesick, and since all the good food in Israel is either Lebanese or cooked by one of my aunts, a Lebanese diner sounded right on the money.
It was a small menu - they only had four or five dishes, which is understandable, considering that they were just starting to do the Lebanese thing; I wouldn't want to stock up to do middle eastern cooking in the middle west. In fact, that first evening, there were only about three group that showed up in the entire two hours my friends and I were there. (Gratifyingly, word of mouth spread - less than a month later, the place was packed on Friday evening. Six months after that, it was a normal evening crowd. So that worked out okay.) I ordered a chicken dish I vaguely remembered having before, called Shish Taouk. (To be perfectly honest, what I was really looking forward to was being able to take the hummus, fries, and whatever else I ordered as a main dish, wrap them all up together in a pita, and eat it that way.)
(Shawarma is pretty much the best food in the world. It's kind of like a Greek gyro, in the same way that a Kobe steak is kind of like a Big Mac. You can generally get them one of two ways - stuffed into the pocket of a pita, or in a laffa - a larger piece of flatbread without an empty space in the middle. I desperately miss it.
Seriously - this was something I would eat six or seven times a week in Israel. For four bucks, I could get a full meal - including a ton of vegetables - wrapped in an amazingly delicious piece of bread, and walk down the street eating it.
Man, my next blog should be "the year of eating nothing but shawarma.
I have no idea why it's been so difficult for me to actually talk about cumin this week. I mean, I really like it! It's a delicious spice! I think I made a strategic mistake in cooking hummus first - that mistake being that I forgot how totally nuts I am for middle eastern food.
DAMN I miss shawarma!)
...called Shish Taouk. I knew that I'd had it before, and that I had really liked it, but couldn't remember when. When it finally arrived, I bit into it... And tasted my hummus-fried chicken. Apparently, twice in my life now I've made up on my own, dishes that already have a long history.
The joke was on me, of course, because although they taste similar, Shish Taouk is actually nothing like the chicken dish that I make. They taste similar, and use many of the same flavors, but shish taouk is missing both hummus and tahini, two things that many people might consider fairly important to the whole hummus ambiance.
I have no idea what this story was supposed to be about.
So, anyway - I had some hummus. I had some chicken. I also had some mushrooms. I made some hummus-fried chicken, as well as some hummus-fried portobello.
HUMMUS-FRIED STUFF
Ingredients:
One pound of chicken breasts
Two good-sized portobello caps
One cup of hummus (Recipe in previous post)
One half teaspoon cumin
A pinch of salt and pepper
Lemon juice
Oil - olive or sesame
This is a really simple deal here. First, turn the hummus into a marinade. That involves making it slightly more acidic, and amping up the primary flavors a bit. So, mix in the extra cumin, salt, and pepper, and hit it with the lemon juice. How much? Damned if I know. I've been trying to be better about measuring things, but I totally forgot. Also, I was using squirt-bottle lemon juice rather than fresh lemon juice, so I just kept adding it until it was the consistency I wanted. To put it differently - keep adding lemon juice until the hummus loosens up a bit - you want to be able to smoothly spread it on the chicken, but it shouldn't be runny.
I cooked the chicken breasts whole, but you could also slice or cube the chicken. The mushrooms should be sliced think. Coat everything liberally in the hummus mixture, and let it sit for a half hour or more. (really, for as long as you have the forethought to have given yourself.) (Work through that sentence again, slowly - it'll make sense.) Warm up the oil and toss in the food. (You'll probably have to do it in two batches, if you made all the stuff I listed above.
You want the oil to be medium-high. You're playing a dangerous game here; you need to get it hot enough to turn the hummus into a crust, but if you let it get too hot, the hummus will burn, bind to itself and the pan, and pull right off when you go to remove your food. (Using tongs is a good idea.) If you're cooking chicken breasts, it may be a good idea at this point to go back in time and cube the chicken - it will definitely be easier to control the heat and not overcook things with cubes rather than whole breasts.
Your mileage may vary, depending on the thickness of your cut of chicken, but I find about five minutes, flip, then another five does the job. (You could also start in a frying pan, then switch to the oven - but you'll probably wind up with soggier chicken than you'd prefer.) The mushrooms get basically the exact same treatment, except less time per side - two minutes should do fine.
Serve over rice. In my case, I served it over the following:
JEERA RICE
This is an Indian rice recipe, using cumin seeds. You can find many different variations on it, all over the internet. It's an interesting variant on fried rice; instead of taking already cooked rice and frying it, you take rice that's about 3/4 cooked and fry it for a few minutes to add some flavor before finishing cooking it.
In one pot, start a cup of basmati rice goin'. When it's almost done - soft, but still hard in the middle - drain out the water. Get some oil (or ghee - and sorry if you don't know ghee, I don't know enough about it to explain) cookin', and toss in a small chopped onion. When it gets lonely, throw in two teaspoons of cumin seeds to keep it company. After about two minutes, your nose should be telling you that cumin is delicious - when this happens, dump the rice in and give the whole mixture a minute to get acquainted. Once you feel like the rice has gotten some oil, cumin, and onion all up in its business, rain on the party - a half cup of water, cover, and simmer till the rice is complete. Serve it with the hummus-fried chicken.
Yousef, at this point in the dinner, made a really smart point - you could do some really nice harmonies, with (let's say) coriander rice going under the heavily cumin'd chicken. As it is, the main flavors in the rice and the chicken went smoothly together, which is definitely one way to do things. There are others.
Tomorrow - I've been looking so long at these pictures of cumin that I almost believe that they're real. Also, a quick recipe, the weekly mushroom report, and black cumin.
(He was my favorite cooking-related superhero in the turbulent 70s.)
Showing posts with label Hummus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hummus. Show all posts
Friday, February 19, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Five Digressions on Hummus (#s 3-5)
Here are the remaining three parts of my post about hummus. Cumin is actually mentioned in this one.
I’m going to come clean - I am a total hummus snob. It makes it hard to talk about the food with any objectivity.
The thing is, in Israel, hummus is an obsession – more popular, I am told, than in Lebanon, where it originated. It has been suggested that this is because when Jewish settlers first came to Israel, they were eager to embrace their new home, including its food. My Israeli cousins are a perfect example.
I have a large family in Israel which emigrated from the republic of Georgia in the early 70s. My cousins are split down the middle – some of them are Israeli, some of them are Georgian. This has nothing to do with age or place of birth; the two oldest, Yossi and David, are both very Israeli, while the youngest, my cousin Leah, is far more Georgian. Admittedly, this is a small sample set – seven data points – but in my experience hummus consumption tracks strongly with Israeli identification. I’m not saying that some of my cousins don’t consider themselves Israeli – I’m just saying that some of them act more like Israelis, some more like Georgians. This is made more complicated by the fact that, as a country, Israel is barely sixty years old… what does it even mean to be Israeli when almost everyone is an immigrant? Our grandfather – my father’s father – was born in Israel, before his family returned to their native Georgia. A grandfather born in Israel – if there were an Israeli DAR, I would be in it. My point is, I come by hummus snobbery, if not honestly, at least arguably morally.
Snobbery. Sometimes it’s worth it, sometimes it’s not. It’s worth being a wine snob; there's just not enough difference for it to be worth being a gin snob. (Although I’m sure that there are gin people out there who are gasping in horror right now.)[1] It’s worth being a bagel snob – there is nothing I hate more in life than biting into what was advertised as a bagel but in fact turns out to merely be toroidal bread. On the other hand, Yousef recently bought a bunch of “high-end” milk from a frou-frou local creamery; nobody really felt like there was a significant difference, and some people liked the regular milk better. So what's the point? Why be a milk snob?
Hummus? Dear lord. The best hummus is sublime. The worst hummus tastes like chickpea dog food. This mostly happens when you buy store-bought hummus in the US. Athenos – I’m looking at you. Tribe of Two Sheiks is edible, but not particularly good. Sabra is the only major brand that I’ve ever felt was decent, but you pay quite a premium for it. (Sabra also sells prepackaged hummus in Israel – it’s both tastier and cheaper over there.)
If you want top-quality hummus, what you’re looking for is a restaurant run by a slightly older, slightly plump Lebanese or Turkish lady. The thicker the accent the better. Even better, a grocery store that makes its own hummus – but again, ownership is critical. If you don’t see that Lebanese lady – past her prime, but still quite handsome – behind the counter, reconsider your situation. If instead there is a hippy behind the counter? RUN. HIPPIES MAKE SHITTY HUMMUS. I’m sure there are exceptions – my friend Meg is a great cook, and I know she makes hummus – but I stand by that rule. It will get under-blended, because they think chickpea chunks are more "authentic", and you just know they're gonna put patchouli oil or some shit like that in it.
DO NOT LET HIPPIES MAKE YOUR HUMMUS.
What foods are you snobby about?
Victoria told me that her friend Mog had a great recipe for hummus with cumin in it. That sounded great – just like what I wanted to make. Only three problems. Mog wasn’t available, Victoria didn’t have the recipe, and every time I’ve tried to make hummus on my own it’s come out as the previously-mentioned chickpea dog food.
I think I should subtitle this blog Telling you how to cook then doing the exact opposite. Two days after I write up a post about not sweating recipes, I spend half a week following recipes exactly; a few days ago I wrote about how useless cookbooks are. So what was the first thing I did when I wanted some hummus? I whipped out my Syrian and Lebanese cookbook.
Oh, by the way, this is the picture from the back of the cookbook:
That is just about the youngest and thinnest a hypothetical Lebanese lady should be in order for you to trust her to make hummus.
Unfortunately, the recipe in the cookbook didn’t really do it for me. I mean, it sounded great – but it used dried chickpeas, which take forever to cook, and it used pomegranate seeds, which are absolutely delicious but which I didn’t have. So, I went with plan A – I looked up a few additional recipes, and wung it.
Cumin Hummus
2 Cans (15 oz) Chickpeas (Hummus, Chickpeas, Garbanzo Beans – all the same thing)
½ Cup… Okay, Let’s Call It Tahini, Because That’s What It’ll Be Called In The Store
3 Tbsp Olive Oil
1 ½ Tsp. Salt
Pepper (Some)
1.5 Tbsp Cumin
Garlic (As Much As You Can Stand, That Stuff Is Good)
Juice of One Half Lemon
Open the cans, and drain most of the liquid from them. Pour them, the garlic, tahini, olive oil, and lemon juice into a blender. Blend until mostly smooth. Add in the salt, pepper, and cumin. Blend until seriously just barely not smooth yet. Taste – if delicious, finish blending and serve. If not quite there, add garlic, salt, pepper, lemon, cumin, or any combination until you are satisfied.
I used two teaspoons of cumin, and to be honest, it was probably too much. I liked it a lot, but several people reported it as at the far edge of their spiciness tolerance – any more and it would cease to be enjoyable. So, for this recipe, I dialed it back a bit. Also, I used some water to loosen things up – but why use water when the cans of chick peas already have liquid? If you feel that your hummus is a bit thick, you can always add a bit of water to loosen it up a bit, but it’s a lot harder to go in the other direction, so err on the side of less water.
This is how hummus should look when it is served:
Unless you’ve got some damn good reason for it, there is no excuse for your hummus not to look like this. This is, objectively, the right way to do things. It doesn’t matter where you got your hummus; from a restaurant, from a store, from a Turkish grandma who runs a shady back-alley hummus operation. When you get it home, before you eat it, and certainly before you serve it to other human beings, you do the following things:
1: Get out a big spoon and a plate. Spoon the appropriate amount of hummus into a pile in the center of the plate, then smooth it flat using circular motions. When you’re just about done, push a bit harder in the center of the plate (while still moving your spoon in circles) to make a dent in the center of the hummus.
2. Take some paprika and dust the hummus to taste. Note – I’m giving you some leeway here. Don’t abuse it. In either direction.
3. Pour some olive oil into the well in the center. Pour carefully – you want a glistening golden yolk to your middle eastern egg, not a runny oily mess all over your hummus. If you didn’t make your dent properly, the oil will spread out everywhere. Throw it out. Throw it all out. Just toss the plate in the garbage. The spoon, too. You don’t deserve hummus. This is why she left you.
4. Assuming you are not weeping on the floor over the ruin you have made of your life, you’re done! Feel free to garnish with parsley, olives, or pickles (the tiny Mediterranean variety.) Chances are you’re now about to ruin a perfect hummus plate with absolutely terrible pita, but that’s not your fault. You can’t get good pita in this country for love or money. Trust me, I’ve tried both.
Okay, I just looked at that picture again… I was a bit wrong. Apparently, Victoria didn’t get to the camera before I got to the pita... so that is what a plate of hummus should look, after some inconsiderate asshole has taken a piece of pita and swiped it straight through the middle spilling olive oil all over the place and ruining the visual.
Tomorrow – I’ve got all this hummus! I’m going to make one of my favorite dishes – hummus-fried chicken.
[1] I'm also not saying that there's no difference between a $10 bottle of gin and a $30 bottle of gin. I'm sure there is. You know what? Let me switch to vodka, a drink where I'm on better grounds. A $10 bottle of vodka tastes like absolute shit. It burns your mouth and throat (and not in a good way, either) and gives you a headache. But once you get to the "decent vodka" level... look, I am a vodka snob. I have a stated preference for Stolichnaya (the black labeled one) over Grey Goose, or Level 1, or any of the other premium vodkas I've tasted. I have, in fact, turned up my nose at other premium vodkas over my preferred brand. That's stupid snobbery right there. Sure, I prefer one, but let's be honest. They're all either [delicious] or [paint-thinner] depending on whether or not you like vodka. Not worth snobbery.
Scotch, on the other hand? My word. Just at the $30 price point, you have scotches as different as Laphroaig and Glennfiddich. While they're both fine drinks, it's entirely possible to love one and hate the other, and if you're not at least a little snobby, you're not going to know the difference until you get a mouthful of the Laphroaig, do a spit-take, and say "My god! Did the distillery burn down while they were making that scotch?"
By the way, while I'm writing this, I'm drinking a lovely 12-year called Driftwood which my wife bought for me on the recommendation of the excellent staff of the local liquor store. Shout-out to Schneider's of Capitol Hill.
SNOBBERY
The thing is, in Israel, hummus is an obsession – more popular, I am told, than in Lebanon, where it originated. It has been suggested that this is because when Jewish settlers first came to Israel, they were eager to embrace their new home, including its food. My Israeli cousins are a perfect example.
I have a large family in Israel which emigrated from the republic of Georgia in the early 70s. My cousins are split down the middle – some of them are Israeli, some of them are Georgian. This has nothing to do with age or place of birth; the two oldest, Yossi and David, are both very Israeli, while the youngest, my cousin Leah, is far more Georgian. Admittedly, this is a small sample set – seven data points – but in my experience hummus consumption tracks strongly with Israeli identification. I’m not saying that some of my cousins don’t consider themselves Israeli – I’m just saying that some of them act more like Israelis, some more like Georgians. This is made more complicated by the fact that, as a country, Israel is barely sixty years old… what does it even mean to be Israeli when almost everyone is an immigrant? Our grandfather – my father’s father – was born in Israel, before his family returned to their native Georgia. A grandfather born in Israel – if there were an Israeli DAR, I would be in it. My point is, I come by hummus snobbery, if not honestly, at least arguably morally.
Snobbery. Sometimes it’s worth it, sometimes it’s not. It’s worth being a wine snob; there's just not enough difference for it to be worth being a gin snob. (Although I’m sure that there are gin people out there who are gasping in horror right now.)[1] It’s worth being a bagel snob – there is nothing I hate more in life than biting into what was advertised as a bagel but in fact turns out to merely be toroidal bread. On the other hand, Yousef recently bought a bunch of “high-end” milk from a frou-frou local creamery; nobody really felt like there was a significant difference, and some people liked the regular milk better. So what's the point? Why be a milk snob?
Hummus? Dear lord. The best hummus is sublime. The worst hummus tastes like chickpea dog food. This mostly happens when you buy store-bought hummus in the US. Athenos – I’m looking at you. Tribe of Two Sheiks is edible, but not particularly good. Sabra is the only major brand that I’ve ever felt was decent, but you pay quite a premium for it. (Sabra also sells prepackaged hummus in Israel – it’s both tastier and cheaper over there.)
If you want top-quality hummus, what you’re looking for is a restaurant run by a slightly older, slightly plump Lebanese or Turkish lady. The thicker the accent the better. Even better, a grocery store that makes its own hummus – but again, ownership is critical. If you don’t see that Lebanese lady – past her prime, but still quite handsome – behind the counter, reconsider your situation. If instead there is a hippy behind the counter? RUN. HIPPIES MAKE SHITTY HUMMUS. I’m sure there are exceptions – my friend Meg is a great cook, and I know she makes hummus – but I stand by that rule. It will get under-blended, because they think chickpea chunks are more "authentic", and you just know they're gonna put patchouli oil or some shit like that in it.
DO NOT LET HIPPIES MAKE YOUR HUMMUS.
What foods are you snobby about?
RECIPE
Victoria told me that her friend Mog had a great recipe for hummus with cumin in it. That sounded great – just like what I wanted to make. Only three problems. Mog wasn’t available, Victoria didn’t have the recipe, and every time I’ve tried to make hummus on my own it’s come out as the previously-mentioned chickpea dog food.
I think I should subtitle this blog Telling you how to cook then doing the exact opposite. Two days after I write up a post about not sweating recipes, I spend half a week following recipes exactly; a few days ago I wrote about how useless cookbooks are. So what was the first thing I did when I wanted some hummus? I whipped out my Syrian and Lebanese cookbook.
Oh, by the way, this is the picture from the back of the cookbook:
That is just about the youngest and thinnest a hypothetical Lebanese lady should be in order for you to trust her to make hummus.
Unfortunately, the recipe in the cookbook didn’t really do it for me. I mean, it sounded great – but it used dried chickpeas, which take forever to cook, and it used pomegranate seeds, which are absolutely delicious but which I didn’t have. So, I went with plan A – I looked up a few additional recipes, and wung it.
Cumin Hummus
2 Cans (15 oz) Chickpeas (Hummus, Chickpeas, Garbanzo Beans – all the same thing)
½ Cup… Okay, Let’s Call It Tahini, Because That’s What It’ll Be Called In The Store
3 Tbsp Olive Oil
1 ½ Tsp. Salt
Pepper (Some)
1.5 Tbsp Cumin
Garlic (As Much As You Can Stand, That Stuff Is Good)
Juice of One Half Lemon
Open the cans, and drain most of the liquid from them. Pour them, the garlic, tahini, olive oil, and lemon juice into a blender. Blend until mostly smooth. Add in the salt, pepper, and cumin. Blend until seriously just barely not smooth yet. Taste – if delicious, finish blending and serve. If not quite there, add garlic, salt, pepper, lemon, cumin, or any combination until you are satisfied.
I used two teaspoons of cumin, and to be honest, it was probably too much. I liked it a lot, but several people reported it as at the far edge of their spiciness tolerance – any more and it would cease to be enjoyable. So, for this recipe, I dialed it back a bit. Also, I used some water to loosen things up – but why use water when the cans of chick peas already have liquid? If you feel that your hummus is a bit thick, you can always add a bit of water to loosen it up a bit, but it’s a lot harder to go in the other direction, so err on the side of less water.
PLATING
This is how hummus should look when it is served:
Look - you can see the dried bits from the previous plate, which I ate before Victoria could get the camera.
That, maybe your hummus shouldn't look like so much.
Unless you’ve got some damn good reason for it, there is no excuse for your hummus not to look like this. This is, objectively, the right way to do things. It doesn’t matter where you got your hummus; from a restaurant, from a store, from a Turkish grandma who runs a shady back-alley hummus operation. When you get it home, before you eat it, and certainly before you serve it to other human beings, you do the following things:
1: Get out a big spoon and a plate. Spoon the appropriate amount of hummus into a pile in the center of the plate, then smooth it flat using circular motions. When you’re just about done, push a bit harder in the center of the plate (while still moving your spoon in circles) to make a dent in the center of the hummus.
2. Take some paprika and dust the hummus to taste. Note – I’m giving you some leeway here. Don’t abuse it. In either direction.
3. Pour some olive oil into the well in the center. Pour carefully – you want a glistening golden yolk to your middle eastern egg, not a runny oily mess all over your hummus. If you didn’t make your dent properly, the oil will spread out everywhere. Throw it out. Throw it all out. Just toss the plate in the garbage. The spoon, too. You don’t deserve hummus. This is why she left you.
4. Assuming you are not weeping on the floor over the ruin you have made of your life, you’re done! Feel free to garnish with parsley, olives, or pickles (the tiny Mediterranean variety.) Chances are you’re now about to ruin a perfect hummus plate with absolutely terrible pita, but that’s not your fault. You can’t get good pita in this country for love or money. Trust me, I’ve tried both.
Okay, I just looked at that picture again… I was a bit wrong. Apparently, Victoria didn’t get to the camera before I got to the pita... so that is what a plate of hummus should look, after some inconsiderate asshole has taken a piece of pita and swiped it straight through the middle spilling olive oil all over the place and ruining the visual.
Tomorrow – I’ve got all this hummus! I’m going to make one of my favorite dishes – hummus-fried chicken.
[1] I'm also not saying that there's no difference between a $10 bottle of gin and a $30 bottle of gin. I'm sure there is. You know what? Let me switch to vodka, a drink where I'm on better grounds. A $10 bottle of vodka tastes like absolute shit. It burns your mouth and throat (and not in a good way, either) and gives you a headache. But once you get to the "decent vodka" level... look, I am a vodka snob. I have a stated preference for Stolichnaya (the black labeled one) over Grey Goose, or Level 1, or any of the other premium vodkas I've tasted. I have, in fact, turned up my nose at other premium vodkas over my preferred brand. That's stupid snobbery right there. Sure, I prefer one, but let's be honest. They're all either [delicious] or [paint-thinner] depending on whether or not you like vodka. Not worth snobbery.
Scotch, on the other hand? My word. Just at the $30 price point, you have scotches as different as Laphroaig and Glennfiddich. While they're both fine drinks, it's entirely possible to love one and hate the other, and if you're not at least a little snobby, you're not going to know the difference until you get a mouthful of the Laphroaig, do a spit-take, and say "My god! Did the distillery burn down while they were making that scotch?"
By the way, while I'm writing this, I'm drinking a lovely 12-year called Driftwood which my wife bought for me on the recommendation of the excellent staff of the local liquor store. Shout-out to Schneider's of Capitol Hill.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Five Digressions on Hummus (#s 1 and 2)
So, I made some hummus. It was really good. It had a bunch of cumin in it. I wrote a blog post about this hummus.
This post has two problems: first, it is too long for one blog post, but not quite long enough for two. Not only that, but it doesn't split up particularly well. Oh well; such is life. Second, it's all about hummus. This week isn't about hummus, it's about cumin. I mean, the hummus I will wind up giving a recipe for - tomorrow - has a lot of cumin in it, but I'm going to come clean with you - I'm not saying word one about cumin today.
Since I've already gotten that out in the open, I think I'm going to shortchange you today, and give two fifths of the post today, and the rest tomorrow. I present: two short digressions on hummus.
Hummus is an Arabic word. It uses sounds which do not exist in English, and for which English has no proper way to spell. As a result, there is no canonical way to spell it. I’m going to choose hummus out of convenience, but humus, hoummous, humos, hoummos, hoummus, or haminababilazeebalaboubilahaminababilazeebalabop are all equally valid. Ḥummous – the H with a dot under it – seems to be the best option to my ear, assuming you’re willing to go with extended character sets. As for how to say that word…
CHOO-MOOSE. And that’s not choo, as in choo-choo train, neither – that’s the Arabic/Hebrew CHHH, or Ḥ - the guttural sound that leads off channukah. It comes entirely from the back of the throat, without requiring the lips or throat.
CHOO-MOOSE. I will never forget that. Once, while I was living in Israel, a waitress in a Lebanese restaurant I was eating in decided that she had had it up to here with these idiot Americans who didn’t even bother to learn how to pronounce words. I asked for “chuh-miss”, and was rewarded with a blank stare. I had no idea how to react – it’s practically the national dish, it would be like a waitress not knowing what you were talking about if you asked for ketchup. Chuh-miss, I repeated, assuming she had misheard me. “What?” “Chuh-miss! For, you know, pita! Chuh-miss!” My Hebrew is terrible… but this was not exactly something which required advanced communication skills. I ordered hummus almost every day. “Aah!” she said, giving me a smile, triumphant and cutting. “Choo-moose! You mean choo-moose.” “Yes?” I said, suddenly unsure of myself. Her eyes were as nasty as her smile, and were clearly indicating that she had beaten me in some way. I really had no idea what that way was. I just wanted some hummus. “It’s not ‘huh-meees’. It’s CHOO-MOOSE.”
“CHOO-MOOSE!” At this point I realized that I was trapped in a private war, a war that thousands of tourists had started with this woman – and one that she fully intended not just to finish, but to win. The thing is, I was really, really hungry, and fairly confused. So I meekly apologized, eyes low, for my terrible Hebrew, and I thanked her for correcting me. Magnanimous in victory, she walked away, head held as high as any soldier returning from the front. She was back quickly – it is proper to treat a defeated foe with respect – with a plate of perfectly-prepared hummus, and some deliciously fluffy pita. If this was surrender, I decided, I could manage to give up more often.
Have you ever noticed how translating the names of a lot of foreign foods to English totally ruins the mystique? Pita is Greek for bread. That’s it. Just bread. So stop asking for pita bread. When you order maki sushi, you're ordering... rolled sushi. What a surprise. My favorite Thai soup – Thom Kha Gai – is, if I remember correctly, “Coconut milk soup with chicken.” And I’m not even going to start on café con leche.
Well, I hate to be a mystique-ruiner, but hummus simply means chickpeas. That’s it. In fact “hummus” isn’t, technically, even the name of the dish – it’s ḥummus bi taḥina, (On the other hand, tahina – that’s “ta-ḤEE-nah”, with the CHHHH sound, not “ta-hee-knee”, pale face – is from a word meaning “to grind”, so I guess that’s okay.) The taḥina – the sesame paste that binds the dish together – is every bit as important as the chickpeas are to the dish. Still, we call the dish hummus, mostly for the same reason that we don’t call Linux GNU/Linux.[1]
I honestly don't know what I expected. I mean, Chinese restaurants have all these lovely poetic names like Dragon and Phoenix Soup, or Ants Climbing on Trees, or even General Tso's Chicken. So you expect Moo Goo Gai Pan to be something slightly less prosaic than "sliced chicken and button mushrooms." I'm not saying that expecting anything but that is even slightly realistic - after all, how many restaurants offer dishes with names like "Washington DC On A Spring Day"? No, they offer things that people can understand - sauteed shrimp in garlic sauce.
I guess all I'm saying is, don't ever try to translate the names of foreign dishes. I like the mystique - but I'm also incredibly curious, and it's sad to see that curiosity lead to bad ends so often. For every imported food word like penne ("quill"), there are ten like croissant. If you never find out what it means, there's never anything there to disappoint you.
Tomorrow - Digressions Three, Four, and Five
[1] For those of you who are not the particular type of geek to know what I’m talking about… Linux is an operating system – a competitor to Windows or Mac OSX. It’s also open source, which means unlike those two operating systems, the underlying source code (the instructions that tell the computer how to make everything work) is available for anyone to look at and make their own version of, if they like. Linux itself is the “kernel” – the central part of the operating system. If an operating system were a car, the kernel would be the engine.
There are those who would argue – quite loudly – that while the engine is the most important part of a car, it doesn’t constitute a car in and of itself. It was (in their opinions) the addition of the GNU tools – a set of basic software that extends the operating system’s functionality – that made Linux a fully-fledged operating system, as opposed to simply a powerful but ultimately useless engine. They therefore believe that Linux should properly be referred to as GNU/Linux, and they make this point as loudly and as frequently as possible.
Here’s the problem – when everyone else in the world calls something by a simple name, and you insist that it be called by a more complex name which is, despite being technically correct, confusing to everyone else, you are an asshole. Luckily, the world of food, as far as I can tell, isn’t populated by the same sort of socially retarded nerds that comprise the world of Linux. As a result, I’ve never heard anyone make a fuss that hummus should actually be called hummus bi tahini. It’s just what you do – when you ask for a sandwich on “whole wheat” you don’t expect the sandwich to come on unground kernels of wheat. You expect that people will serve you bread. And when you ask for hummus, nobody is ever going to think you’re asking for a plate of chickpeas.
Now you know. And knowing is half the battle. Also, this rant is much more about the GNU/Linux types… and that fight mostly ended about five years ago. I’m really not sure why I’m ranting about it today.
I hope that it’s because it is a charming thing to do?
This post has two problems: first, it is too long for one blog post, but not quite long enough for two. Not only that, but it doesn't split up particularly well. Oh well; such is life. Second, it's all about hummus. This week isn't about hummus, it's about cumin. I mean, the hummus I will wind up giving a recipe for - tomorrow - has a lot of cumin in it, but I'm going to come clean with you - I'm not saying word one about cumin today.
Since I've already gotten that out in the open, I think I'm going to shortchange you today, and give two fifths of the post today, and the rest tomorrow. I present: two short digressions on hummus.
HOW TO PRONOUNCE THE WORD HUMMUS
A guide for the perplexed, with a prologue on spelling
Since we had so much fun talking about pronunciation yesterday
Hummus is an Arabic word. It uses sounds which do not exist in English, and for which English has no proper way to spell. As a result, there is no canonical way to spell it. I’m going to choose hummus out of convenience, but humus, hoummous, humos, hoummos, hoummus, or haminababilazeebalaboubilahaminababilazeebalabop are all equally valid. Ḥummous – the H with a dot under it – seems to be the best option to my ear, assuming you’re willing to go with extended character sets. As for how to say that word…
CHOO-MOOSE. And that’s not choo, as in choo-choo train, neither – that’s the Arabic/Hebrew CHHH, or Ḥ - the guttural sound that leads off channukah. It comes entirely from the back of the throat, without requiring the lips or throat.
CHOO-MOOSE. I will never forget that. Once, while I was living in Israel, a waitress in a Lebanese restaurant I was eating in decided that she had had it up to here with these idiot Americans who didn’t even bother to learn how to pronounce words. I asked for “chuh-miss”, and was rewarded with a blank stare. I had no idea how to react – it’s practically the national dish, it would be like a waitress not knowing what you were talking about if you asked for ketchup. Chuh-miss, I repeated, assuming she had misheard me. “What?” “Chuh-miss! For, you know, pita! Chuh-miss!” My Hebrew is terrible… but this was not exactly something which required advanced communication skills. I ordered hummus almost every day. “Aah!” she said, giving me a smile, triumphant and cutting. “Choo-moose! You mean choo-moose.” “Yes?” I said, suddenly unsure of myself. Her eyes were as nasty as her smile, and were clearly indicating that she had beaten me in some way. I really had no idea what that way was. I just wanted some hummus. “It’s not ‘huh-meees’. It’s CHOO-MOOSE.”
“CHOO-MOOSE!” At this point I realized that I was trapped in a private war, a war that thousands of tourists had started with this woman – and one that she fully intended not just to finish, but to win. The thing is, I was really, really hungry, and fairly confused. So I meekly apologized, eyes low, for my terrible Hebrew, and I thanked her for correcting me. Magnanimous in victory, she walked away, head held as high as any soldier returning from the front. She was back quickly – it is proper to treat a defeated foe with respect – with a plate of perfectly-prepared hummus, and some deliciously fluffy pita. If this was surrender, I decided, I could manage to give up more often.
MYSTIQUE
Have you ever noticed how translating the names of a lot of foreign foods to English totally ruins the mystique? Pita is Greek for bread. That’s it. Just bread. So stop asking for pita bread. When you order maki sushi, you're ordering... rolled sushi. What a surprise. My favorite Thai soup – Thom Kha Gai – is, if I remember correctly, “Coconut milk soup with chicken.” And I’m not even going to start on café con leche.
Well, I hate to be a mystique-ruiner, but hummus simply means chickpeas. That’s it. In fact “hummus” isn’t, technically, even the name of the dish – it’s ḥummus bi taḥina, (On the other hand, tahina – that’s “ta-ḤEE-nah”, with the CHHHH sound, not “ta-hee-knee”, pale face – is from a word meaning “to grind”, so I guess that’s okay.) The taḥina – the sesame paste that binds the dish together – is every bit as important as the chickpeas are to the dish. Still, we call the dish hummus, mostly for the same reason that we don’t call Linux GNU/Linux.[1]
I honestly don't know what I expected. I mean, Chinese restaurants have all these lovely poetic names like Dragon and Phoenix Soup, or Ants Climbing on Trees, or even General Tso's Chicken. So you expect Moo Goo Gai Pan to be something slightly less prosaic than "sliced chicken and button mushrooms." I'm not saying that expecting anything but that is even slightly realistic - after all, how many restaurants offer dishes with names like "Washington DC On A Spring Day"? No, they offer things that people can understand - sauteed shrimp in garlic sauce.
I guess all I'm saying is, don't ever try to translate the names of foreign dishes. I like the mystique - but I'm also incredibly curious, and it's sad to see that curiosity lead to bad ends so often. For every imported food word like penne ("quill"), there are ten like croissant. If you never find out what it means, there's never anything there to disappoint you.
Tomorrow - Digressions Three, Four, and Five
[1] For those of you who are not the particular type of geek to know what I’m talking about… Linux is an operating system – a competitor to Windows or Mac OSX. It’s also open source, which means unlike those two operating systems, the underlying source code (the instructions that tell the computer how to make everything work) is available for anyone to look at and make their own version of, if they like. Linux itself is the “kernel” – the central part of the operating system. If an operating system were a car, the kernel would be the engine.
There are those who would argue – quite loudly – that while the engine is the most important part of a car, it doesn’t constitute a car in and of itself. It was (in their opinions) the addition of the GNU tools – a set of basic software that extends the operating system’s functionality – that made Linux a fully-fledged operating system, as opposed to simply a powerful but ultimately useless engine. They therefore believe that Linux should properly be referred to as GNU/Linux, and they make this point as loudly and as frequently as possible.
Here’s the problem – when everyone else in the world calls something by a simple name, and you insist that it be called by a more complex name which is, despite being technically correct, confusing to everyone else, you are an asshole. Luckily, the world of food, as far as I can tell, isn’t populated by the same sort of socially retarded nerds that comprise the world of Linux. As a result, I’ve never heard anyone make a fuss that hummus should actually be called hummus bi tahini. It’s just what you do – when you ask for a sandwich on “whole wheat” you don’t expect the sandwich to come on unground kernels of wheat. You expect that people will serve you bread. And when you ask for hummus, nobody is ever going to think you’re asking for a plate of chickpeas.
Now you know. And knowing is half the battle. Also, this rant is much more about the GNU/Linux types… and that fight mostly ended about five years ago. I’m really not sure why I’m ranting about it today.
I hope that it’s because it is a charming thing to do?
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