Two ‘m’s…..and while I make it myself, I like my sister’s best of all. She learned to make it from my brother-in-law, who is from Iran.

I’m told that an Americanized version can be made with cannellini beans or black-eyed peas but I haven’t tried to find a recipe for either version.

The best kind I’ve ever made was using cooked chickpeas, roasted red bell peppers–(which I roasted myself and used the pepper juices in the hummus), roasted garlic (ditto, fresh, home-roasted is best), sea salt, black pepper from a grinder, fresh-squeezed lemon juice (high proportion of this–I used up the pepper juices first and topped up the liquid requirement with lemon juice), tahini and a very high quality olive oil. Blending it all in the food processor makes it very smooth; waiting to whisk in the olive oil afterwards means you wind up with a coarser dip, which I prefer.

The tahini has to be stirred back together before using since it separates during shipping. If I want the hummus to have a really thick spreadable quality, I dig up the solids from the bottom of the tahini jar and use that instead of the more liquid re-blended tahini.