To Jump straight to Recipes with Chickpeas or to this Weeks Friday Night Menu.

My Savta, my most significant “food-spiration” personality, the woman who remains the best cook ever (and whose family was Israeli for generations unknown and cooked only Israeli or Middle Eastern food), never once prepared hummus. Looking back, this seems—to my modern understanding of Israeli food—something that was severely lacking from her repertoire. She would make tehina for every single meal but never hummus. What was up with that? Why was it missing from the table? A bit of a history lesson about chickpeas and hummus helps answer the question. So stick with me for perhaps the mildest of histories to solve the least stressful mystery of all time, one that could easily go unsolved, but will hopefully stir your curiosity.

The city of Lachish, south of Jerusalem in the year 701 BCE, was facing an existential crisis. The army of Sennacherib was in the process of building a siege ramp to attack the city and get one step closer to their aim: Jerusalem. Though Lachish was well fortified, it didn’t stand a chance against the superpower of the day. The city was decimated; its men, women, and children were taken captive and exiled into the vast Assyrian Empire. We don’t just have biblical accounts in the books of Kings II, Isaiah, and Chronicles to testify to this. Sennacherib, the king of the Assyrians, was so chuffed with his victory that he had vast wall panels, carved in bas-relief, made for his throne room in the palace in Nineveh. In them, we see every phase of the conquering of Lachish—from siege ramps to people subjugated and exiled. Today, you can see the reliefs in the British Museum (if you find yourself in London at the moment, this is a good way to reflect on the three-week period of mourning Jews are commemorating at the moment).

In excavations from the 1930s, pottery at Lachish was found to contain remnants of chickpeas dating back to the Bronze and Iron Age, perhaps not from the siege itself, but one can’t help but wonder: was this someone’s last meal, interrupted as the Assyrians laid siege to the Judean city?

That is to say that chickpeas are ancient. They are one of the earliest cultivated legumes in human history, with domestication traced to around 7000–6000 BCE in the Fertile Crescent, modern-day southeastern Turkey and Syria. In the Bronze Age, chickpeas were common from as far east as India and as far west as modern-day Switzerland. But it is in tropical and subtropical climates with moderate water that chickpeas thrive, and they became a staple food of the Mediterranean, Central Asia, and the Indian Subcontinent.

Today, India is, by far, the world’s top producer of chickpeas.

Jews and Chickpeas

The ancient world was one in which consumption of animal protein wasn’t a sure thing, yet the need for protein was undeniable. Legumes like chickpeas and fava beans provided an easy and inexpensive form of protein. Yet Jews had a problem: many developed a hereditary enzyme deficiency—G6PD deficiency—that can be triggered by fava beans and, in severe cases, prove deadly. So, while the rest of the ancient world might have used fava and chickpeas interchangeably, Jews overwhelmingly chose to use chickpeas.

Middle Eastern and Sephardi Jews used chickpeas in soups, salads, stews, and tagines. In fact, the Jews of Spain were so closely associated with chickpeas in their food that during the Spanish Inquisition, anyone found cooking chickpeas was liable to be arrested under suspicion of being a crypto-Jew.

Ashkenazi Jews had almost nothing to do with chickpeas—called arbes (meaning “peas” in Yiddish)—as they weren’t a staple food like they were in the Sephardi or Mizrachi world. Instead, they were reserved for a few lifecycle events, such as a Shalom Zachor (celebrating the birth of a boy on the first Friday night after birth) or a seudat havra’ah (the condolence meal served to mourners upon returning from a funeral). Chickpeas were served for their symbolic roundness, representing the cycle of life, continuity, and fertility. Some Ashkenazi families served arbes on Purim in allusion to the legend that Esther kept a vegetarian diet in Achashverosh’s palace to preserve the laws of kashrut. But aside from that, chickpeas rarely, if ever, graced the Ashkenazi table.

Falafel:

Of all the milestones in the humble chickpea’s culinary history, none are more iconic than falafel and hummus.

In New York, on the corner of 46th Street between 6th and 5th Avenues, you will find a food truck—Moshe’s Falafel. It is without question the best falafel I have ever tasted, and I have had my fair share! Moshe, who was a 1970s Israeli pop star, emigrated to America in the 1980s. Since there wasn’t much demand for Israeli pop music in New York, he took his wife Aviva’s advice and cooked falafel with love and started selling it from a food truck—following in the tradition started by Yemenite Jews who emigrated to Israel.

In a shameful part of our history, Israel did not give equal opportunities to Middle Eastern immigrants as it did to Western ones, and these immigrants found creative ways to make a living. Yemenites took falafel—made in Yemen as a treat—and turned it into street food. The first written report of falafel served in pita comes from the Palestine Post on October 19, 1939, where food columnist Lilian Cornfeld describes: “There is first half a pita (Arab loaf), slit open and filled with five filafels, a few fried chips and sometimes even a little salad.”

Moshe’s fame today is due to his falafel, not his long-forgotten pop career.

Though it is often debated whether falafel is Israeli or Arab, the truth is: it’s neither. Most food historians trace its earliest form to Egypt, where Coptic Christians prepared ta’amiya (made from fava beans) as early as late antiquity. Others argue for Yemeni origins, or note the influence of deep-frying techniques from India, though there is no archaeological evidence of falafel per se in India. In any case, Jews, for medical reasons, replaced all fava beans with chickpeas, giving us the chickpea falafel we know today.

Hummus: Ancient and Modern

Hummus has both a more ancient and more modern history than falafel. Falafel must be made with soaked, raw chickpeas—if made with cooked chickpeas, it requires egg as a binding agent and lacks the crisp crust. Proper falafel is soaked, raw chickpeas with some flour or bread to bind it, and it fries up crispy outside, soft inside.

Much older is hummus. Chickpeas mashed into a paste with garlic, vinegar, tahini, and lemon juice appear in Arab cookbooks from the 13th century, though similar preparations were likely eaten long before. Easy to prepare (if labor-intensive), full of protein, and eaten with bread, hummus was—and still is—a staple food throughout the Levant.

Both my older sons have taken me to their favourite hummusia (“hummus bar”)—one in Tel Aviv and the other in Raanana. In these hole-in-the-wall restaurants, the Friday queue goes out the door. They serve creamy, insanely smooth, super-fresh hummus either plain, or topped with warm mushrooms, minced lamb, hard-boiled egg, cooked chickpeas, tehina, or all of the above. Eating hummus is an Israeli national pastime. In fact, in the 2008 film Don’t Mess with the Zohan, Zohan (played by Adam Sandler) is satirically seen brushing his teeth with hummus.

But let’s get back to the mystery at the start of this blog: Why didn’t my super-Israeli grandmother—the bastion of Israeli food knowledge—ever serve homemade hummus?

Simple: hummus wasn’t something made at home. Its creamy consistency requires time and effort, and before the advent of home food processors, it remained the province of restaurants and hummusiyas. It wasn’t until 1994 that the Strauss company in Israel began selling hummus in supermarket tubs—found in the fridge next to yoghurts and cheeses. The ad campaign focused on being able to eat hummus anywhere: at home, at school, or at work. In 1999, Osem joined the market with its own line of ready-made hummus and salads. Today, buying hummus in a supermarket—not just in Israel but around the world—is as common as picking up a container of yoghurt.

So, my grandmother didn’t serve homemade hummus because it simply wasn’t something one made at home. And she never owned a food processor. Mystery solved. And while I haven’t exactly earned my deerstalker hat à la Sherlock Holmes, I’m feeling ridiculously satisfied with my food exploration. From ancient Lachish to Zohan, chickpeas and their many culinary offshoots have nourished bodies—and stories—for millennia.

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Recipes with Chickpeas on the Wine & Challah Website

• Cauliflower Vegan Curry
• The Meat from Hummus im Basa’ar
• Tabouleh-like Couscous Salad
• Moroccan Style Apricot Chicken
• Homemade Hummus
• Moroccan Fish 
• Falafel

This weeks Friday Night Menu:

Odelle and Jacob are home for Shabbat! Yay!!! so I’m cooking all their favourites:

• Wine & (Delicious) Challah
• Homemade Hummus (because I inspire myself sometimes!)
• Chicken Soup and Matzah Balls
• Chemola Chicken with Potatoes & Tomatoes (Recipe will be up on the site soon)
• Mujadara – Rice with Lentils
• Broccolini
• Fruit
• Babka for a Crowd