Fattet hummus

Ingredients

• Chickpeas — soaked overnight400 g
• Pita bread3
• Thick yoghurt700 ml
• Tahini4 tbsp
• Garlic5 clove
• Lemon1
• Ghee80 g
• Pine nuts60 g
• Parsley30 g
• Paprika1 tsp
• Oil for frying200 ml
• Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Boil the chickpeas in unsalted water for ninety minutes, until completely soft, and keep the water.

   95 min

2. 2

   Tear the pitas into two-finger pieces and fry them in oil to a golden crisp.

   12 min

3. 3

   Whisk the yoghurt with the tahini, crushed garlic, lemon juice and salt until smooth.

   6 min

4. 4

   Let the yoghurt mixture down with a couple of spoons of the chickpea water to the body of thick cream.

   4 min

5. 5

   Fry the pine nuts in the ghee until golden and take them off the heat.

   6 min

6. 6

   Spread the fried bread in a dish and top it with the hot chickpeas and a spoon of their liquid.

   5 min

7. 7

   Pour over the yoghurt, spoon on the butter and nuts, dust with paprika and parsley and serve at once.

   5 min

About the dish

The bread has to be fried rather than dried. Only fried bread survives under yoghurt long enough to reach the table with crisp edges.

The yoghurt is stabilised with starch or tahini — otherwise the hot chickpeas split it. That is the only way to serve the dish warm without curds.

It is assembled at the last minute. Fatteh is a dish of crisp against soft, and five minutes after assembly the contrast is gone.

Worth knowing

• — Salt the chickpeas only once they are soft. Salt at the start leaves the skins tough however long they cook.
• — Do not throw away the chickpea water. It thins the yoghurt and moistens the bread; plain water does neither as well.
• — The meat version has minced lamb over the chickpeas. It is called fatteh with meat and counts as festive.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

620 kcal

Protein

26 g

Fat

34 g

Carbs

54 g

More from Lebanon

• Tabbouleh — A parsley salad with a little bulgur in it, not the other way round. There is ten times more herb than grain.
• Baked kibbeh — Two layers of bulgur and lamb with a filling of mince and pine nuts between them.
• Sfiha — Open flatbreads with minced lamb, tomato and pomegranate molasses, from Baalbek.