Hummus Like My Tailor Makes It

Being super-short and no size 6, I have to bring a lot of my clothes to a tailor. I found a great one in a nearby town. She and I have bonded to some extent. During my last visit, we talked about weight and food. She is from Syria and was thrilled to share with me a sample of her hummus. I typically am not a fan of hummus, to be honest. But her hummus was unlike any hummus I’ve ever had! It was so much thinner and creamier in consistency and the taste was fabulous. I asked her for the recipe, but she seemed reluctant. I get the impression that she’s given it to people before who didn’t do it justice.

We talked about the ingredients. I told her I tasted the tahini and lemon. She pointed out that the black flakes were cumin. She doesn’t grind it to a powder – she likes it being noticeable. It looked to be the size of somewhat coarsely ground pepper. As much as I'd like to say that mine is just like that, I only had ground cumin. But I think that the taste was comparable.

I am going to try to recreate her recipe, by putting together a hodgepodge of recipes I saw on the Internet with pictures that looked like hers but relying mostly on one I saw in Food and Wine. I think I came close!

By the way, I had a can of tahini in my pantry for a long time. When I finally opened it for this recipe, it was separated (as expected), and the solids were rock hard. That was a problem and I almost threw the whole thing away. But Joe convinced me to try to save it by microwaving. He's so smart! So, to soften it up, I microwaved all of it for short amounts of time and broke it up in between them. It took quite a few cycles, but eventually I was working with a mixture that could be stirred!