for French elegance and restraint.
We waited for our second round of martinis. Suddenly, Ariel presented a
gift – a tub of tahini that he brought especially from Nazareth. In an instance
the restraint we may have felt, our wobbly words, and all of the alcohol fumes
around us simply evaporated into thin air in the very presence of this soulful
tub. Then, in a flash and without any warning, things heated up Middle Eastern
style with our tempers soaring up for the real battle: What is the right amount
of tahini for making hummus. Karim cried “Almost none!” Ariel jumped back
“In large amounts, always!” and words turned to shouts really quickly.
But the Mona Lisa fluttered her eyelids to remind us where we all were, so we
just burst out laughing, realizing that in this one blazing moment shared by us
passionate, happy people joined by one common identity, a real romance had
just sparked, because, in the end of it all, it is all about humanity. Since then we
have met many times, for precious moments of partners that travel on a utopian
journey, filled with friendships, recipes, and dreams.
This magical joint journey of ours follows the Hummus Route, an imaginary
route that I envisioned in my mind’s eye between places, people, and dreams,
across the hummus capitals of the Middle East, from Cairo all the way up to
13
Preface
Hummus
Damascus, via Gaza, Jaffa, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Nazareth, Acre, and Beirut. It
On our part, the blessing that this chickpea of pure gold has bestowed on us, is
is a road of revelation that runs in a landscape of yearning, sesame seeds, joy,
the very privilege of enriching our lives with magical moments of gold, when our
pain, thoughts, tears, and laughter, orbiting around the rediscovery of one of
hearts beat together as one. Within the folds of this book, we too have sprinkled
the world’s most ancient raw materials, which goes far beyond borders and into
many golden grains to be discovered by each of our readers, hoping to enrich
the realms of diverse cultures in the history of mankind.
their life with dreams and flavors forever.
With the story of the chickpea we can find the story of us all, from the tables of
I wish the warmest thank you to Orly and Ariel, and all those travelers who
kings, sultans, secret alleyways in age-old marketplaces, and ancient manuscripts,
shared this journey with us into a new future. Our eyes have been opened
to the food stalls of bustling streets and hushed high-end restaurants. On this
as our hearts have embraced and recognized that in the end of it all, it is all
journey, we raised our heads from the pita pocket and the plate, to find ourselves
about humanity.
eager to travel on this old-new road, between these cities, as we shared our
dreams, lots of hummus and falafel, and one bright new world for all, because
this appetite, the tastes, and these huge amounts of tahini culminate into the
unity of a virtue, the talking and listening of a dialogue, because in the end of
Dan Alexander is an international award-winning designer and thought leader, the founder
it all, it is all about humanity.
and creative director of Dan Alexander & Co., an innovation, design, and branding lab
headquartered in Paris. Dan collaborates with opinion leaders and creatives worldwide,
We also discovered that hummus is a culture in its own right, opening up a space
to intercept technology, philosophy, and design. His publication Seafoodpedia won the
that constantly seeks an identity, and our journey uncovered glorious culinary
prestigious Gourmand International Cookbook Award. He lives and works in Paris and in
traditions of past and present. Hummus has reinvented itself over and over again,
the Périgord region in the South of France.
always asking to be rediscovered, in every moment, anew. While the chickpea
retains its identity, it offers us a fresh and unfamiliar tradition of a whole new
social order.
For us, a definition of an identity was unveiled, which relies on the past but
faces the future with a big smile, because chickpeas dissolve any fixed concept by
telling us that hummus is made with love, or not made at all. And this river of
time flowing through our journey, has engulfed us into this space of a void, in an
infinite dialogue of flavors and the endeared closeness of friendships. Because, in
the end, it is all about humanity, and food can only bring hearts closer together.
In our wanderings, we came across one particularly beautiful legend. It tells of
a gold-hearted sultan who treated the entire village to a royal feast, once every
year. Among the countless beverages and dishes set before his guests, he served
a rice and lamb stew speckled with chickpeas. Inside this dish, the sultan would
hide one chickpea made of pure gold. The guest that found this lucky grain in
their serving was crowned the winner, and lavishly rewarded with riches and
treasures for life.
14
15
Hummus
D E F I N I T I O N :
C I C E R , T H E O R I G I N O F C H I C K P E A
c h i c k p e a
A somewhat spherical, irregular-shaped pea-like seed of a legume plant (pulse)
native to the Mediterranean region. It has a buff color, firm texture, and nutty
flavor. It is used in Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisines in soups, stews,
and salads, and can be roasted and eaten as a snack. Chickpea, or cicer in Latin, is
also known as cece ( ceci in plural), garbanzo bean, and bengal gram. This ancient
pulse was domesticated 7,000 years ago, and is the basic ingredient for hummus
and falafel dishes.
Origin of the name: Early eighteenth century (earlier as chiche-pease), from late
Middle English chiche (from Old French chiche, cice, from Latin cicer).
h u m m u s
This word, also spelled humus, houmous, and houmus, is both Arabic and Hebrew
for chickpea. It is also the name of the thick Middle Eastern purée made of mashed
chickpeas, tahini (sesame paste), olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, and other spices, used
as a sandwich filling, spread, or dip.
g a r b a n z o
The origin of this name for chickpea, also called a garbanzo bean, is from mid-
eighteenth-century Spanish – originally from Basque garbantzu, meaning dry ( gartau)
Cicer Sativum, also known as
and seed ( antzu), and garavance, from the edible plant calavance.
Cicer Arietinum, or chickpea.
c i c e r a r i e t i n u m
Hortus Romanus Juxta Systema
Tournefortianum Paulo Strictius
Distributus, by Giorgio Bonelli
The chickpea plant species, of the pea family Fabaceae. Cicer was the classical Latin
(1772-1793). The New York Public
name for chickpea, and arietinum means ram’s head, in reference to the pea’s shape.
Library, Digital Collections
This Latin name is taken from the Cicero family’s common crop, and the cognomen
of the Roman statesman and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero, as recorded by Pliny.
Columella was the first author to use the word arietinum in reference to the seed.
Researchers claim the word cicer derives from the Semitic kikar, which means round
.
17
Hummus
C H I C K P E A S A C R O S S T H E G L O B E
a m h a r i c
h i n d i
ሽምብራ / Shimbra
चना / Chana
a r a b i c
i t a l i a n
صمحلا / Hummus, Hhimmass,
Cece
Malana, Alhams
(Ancient Arabic: Hallaru, Himmis)
j a p a n e s e
ヒヨコマメ / Hiyokomame
c h i n e s e
鹰嘴豆 / Ying Zui Dou,
m a l a y
Ji Tou Dou
Katjang Arab, Katjang Kuda
e n g l i s h
p o r t u g u e s e
Bengal Gram, Chickpea,
Grão, Grão de Bico, Gravanço
Garbanzo Bean
r u s s i a n
f r e n c h
нут / Noot
Pois Chiche
s p a n i s h
g e r m a n
Garbanzo
Kichererbse
s w e d i s h
h e b r e w
Kikärt
סומוח / Hummus
(Ancient Hebrew: הצמח / Himtza)
t u r k i s h
Nochut
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Hummus
ةرهاقلا
T H E W A N D E R I N G K I T C H E N · T H E R O L L I N G F A L A F E L B A L L T A ’ A M I Y A
F A V A B E A N F A L A F E L · K O S H A R Y C H I C K P E A S ,
L E N T I L S , A N D R I C E W I T H S P I C Y T O M A T O S A U C E
Cairo
F E R A K H B E L H U M M U S C H I C K E N A N D C H I C K P E A C A S S E R O L E
H A L A B E S S A T O M A T O - C H I C K P E A S O U P
D U K K A H C R A C K E R S
ריהק
27
Cairo
Ta’amiya, Egyptian fava bean
falafel, are sold fresh from the pan
in Cairo’s bustling markets.
The sight and smell of freshly
baked pita pockets fill the air from
the early hours of the morning.
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Hummus
T H E W A N D E R I N G K I T C H E N
Claudia Roden
The Cairo of my childhood had two faces. One looked like Paris, thanks to the
dream of the Khedive Ismail who, as the ruler of Egypt in the mid-nineteenth
century, invited European architects so that they would cast Western charm upon
the city. Across on the other side was the eastern city with its narrow, meandering
streets, mausoleums, Coptic churches, and mosques whose turrets rose to the
sky. Cairo was a cosmopolitan city where French was the lingua franca. Its Jewish
inhabitants, made up from a mosaic of communities from different parts of the
Jewish world, also spoke Italian, English, and Judeo-Spanish.
Three of my grandparents arrived in Cairo from Aleppo in the late nineteenth
century, and the family continued to cook Halabi food. In the early 1950s, after
going to school in Paris for three years, I came to London to study art, and in
1956 my family had to leave Egypt along with most of the Jewish population
because of the war raging between Israel and Egypt. Cairo’s Jewish population
suffered trauma as many became refugees. They settled in different countries,
and those who passed through London would visit my parents. It was then that
I understood that although we had left Egypt, Egypt had not left us. Food was
the one thing we could hold on to and preserve from our previous life, and it
was the food that we cooked in our lively kitchen that brought us joy. That
is when I began collecting recipes, documenting stories, and researching the
Middle Eastern and Jewish kitchens around the world. Eventually I would turn
this fascination into a profession.
Ta’amiya is one of Egypt’s national foods. Be it children or adults, rich or poor,
everyone enjoys it alike and it is happily devoured any time of the day. The
Coptic Christians (one of the oldest Christian communities in the Middle East)
are credited as the inventors of the dish as well as the molokhia soup, both of
which are vegetarian dishes traditionally eaten during Lent.
33
Cairo
Hummus
Ta’amiya is falafel balls made from split and shelled dried white fava beans.
The best ta’amiya I ever had was at my uncles’ place. Every summer they would
rent the same apartment, and it had a balcony that hung over a coffee shop
whose specialty dish was ta’amiya. The fact that my beloved uncles were on the
curvy side was no coincidence. Whenever we came for a visit, they were eating
a meal on the balcony and, as hard as I tried, I simply could not imagine them
running together like young gazelles, as I was told they once did. Using a rope,
they would roll down a basket to the café and pull it back up filled with hot,
crispy ta’amiya balls dipped in tahini and resting in warm pita breads. We quickly
devoured them and then waited impatiently for the next basket to refill.
Claudia Roden is a world-leading researcher on Jewish cuisine, and a renowned cultural
anthropologist, originally from Cairo. A pioneer in highlighting how food transforms from
place to place and from people to people, Roden has authored dozens of cookbooks that
capture the stories and traditions behind each recipe. She is the honored recipient of many
prizes, including the James Beard Foundation Book Award, and has served as a BBC cooking
show presenter for many years. Roden is now the patron of the London-based HIV charity
The Food Chain. The stories above were adapted from her publication, A Book of Middle
Eastern Food.
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35
36
37
Cairo
Hummus
38
39
Cairo
In Ancient Egypt, chickpeas were an
important offering that ensured safe
passage to the next world. Many of
the oldest known chickpeas were
found in key archaeological sites, as
dried seeds or glazed faience models.
Wall painting, Tomb of Menna,
Thebes (ca. 1422-1411 BCE).
Sonia Halliday Photo Library
40
Hummus
T H E R O L L I N G F A L A F E L B A L L
Dr. On Barak
The falafel and I relocated to Europe more or less simultaneously: I, to begin
an academic career in the study of Middle Eastern history; the falafel, to start
a spicier career as an authentic Middle Eastern health food. At that time, the
turn of the twenty-first century, shrewd Israeli entrepreneurs marketed falafel
in Western Europe and later also in North America, as an affordable Israeli
vegetarian dish. However, at the pioneering branch of Maoz Falafel I regularly
visited, in the university town of Leiden, the story told by the Egyptian kitchen
workers to Dutch customers collided with the version presented on the walls:
They explained that the falafel originated in the land of the Nile, and not in
Israel, and that it is in fact an ancient Egyptian specialty. When the manager of
the branch discovered the subversive explanation given out to customers, the
workers were directed to poke a small Israeli flag on top of each pita laden with
falafel balls, similar to the United States’ declaration of ownership of the
moon.
The question as to the origins of falafel, and particularly the tension between the
versions claiming it originated in Egypt versus Greater Syria (and within it the
Land of Israel), is an unresolved mystery among historians of the region. There
is no dispute that the crispy, deep-fried balls of chickpea purée were invented by
the Egyptian Copts as a substitute for meatballs during Lent. These deep-fried
balls are called ta’amiya, meaning a small portion of food in Arabic, and are made
with fava beans. However, the raw ingredient of the falafel we are familiar with
today is chickpeas, prevalent in Greater Syria, though not in Egypt, where it was
served mainly as a spread or dip. References to a seasoned and deep-fried chickpea
purée first appeared in cookbooks in the second half of the nineteenth century.
When and how did the chickpea transform to become the falafel we eat today?
The answer I propose seeks to balance the falafel ball on the tip of a toothpick,
by claiming that its birth (at least in its present form) dates back to the early
nineteenth century, on the spears of the Egyptian occupation army that was
advancing through Ottoman Palestine, northward towards Syria.
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Cairo
Hummus
Until the beginning of the modern era, Egypt was subjected to the central rule
Once he sensed that the new army was ready for battle, Muhammad Ali escalated
of Istanbul. In addition to its high political and religious status in the Ottoman
the confrontation with Istanbul. In 1831, he sent his son and chief commander,
Empire, the land of the Nile served as the central grain silo from which wheat
Ibrahim Pasha, to the north to meet the Sultan’s soldiers. Over the course
was distributed to the empire’s urban centers, including the imperial capital
of a decade Ibrahim quickly conquered large parts of Palestine/Israel, Syria,
itself. However, during the late-eighteenth to early-nineteenth centuries, large-
and southern Anatolia. Recent studies show that among the Egyptian ruler’s
scale climatic upheavals prompted, or at least accelerated, a series of social and
motivations for the conquest campaign, in addition to his desire to bequeath
political developments that transformed the existing world order and profoundly
Ariel Rosenthal, Orly Peli-Bronshtein, Dan Alexander Page 2
