Hummus with Macadamia Tahini: Our Twist, and a Home Version

Our menu line reads Chickpea Hummus — macadamia tahini, ikura. Two of those words have no business being in a hummus, and both are there on purpose.

This is the whole thinking behind the dish, including the part where the swap costs us something. There is also a home version at the bottom, clearly marked as a home version.

First, the name is redundant and we know it

Hummus is simply the Arabic word for chickpeas. The dish most of the world calls hummus is properly hummus bi tahina — chickpeas with tahini — so “chickpea hummus” is, strictly, chickpea chickpeas.

We print it that way because a menu is read in three seconds by somebody deciding what to eat, not by a linguist. But it is worth knowing, because it tells you what the dish is actually made of: chickpeas and sesame paste, in a ratio that every cook argues about, with lemon, garlic and salt doing the rest. Everything else on any hummus anywhere is a garnish.

Tahini, and why we changed part of it

Tahini is ground sesame seeds and nothing else. It is the backbone of a proper hummus: it brings fat, body, and a specific low bitterness that stops the dip tasting like a bean purée.

We grind macadamia into ours. Macadamia is a fatter, softer, sweeter nut than sesame, with almost no bitter edge and a texture that goes to cream rather than to paste. What it does to a hummus is make it rounder and heavier in the mouth, and slightly sweet at the back — closer to something whipped than something ground.

What it costs: you lose some of the bitterness. Sesame’s bitter note is a load-bearing wall in a traditional hummus — it is what makes the lemon read as sharp and the garlic read as hot. Take it out entirely and the dip goes soft and one-dimensional. So this is a swap, not a replacement, and it only works because something else on the plate goes back in and puts the salt and the edge where the bitterness used to be.

That something else is fish roe

Ikura is salmon roe: large, glossy, orange, cured in salt and often soy. It sits on top of the hummus, and it is the Japanese half of the dish doing structural work rather than decoration.

A traditional hummus is finished with a pool of olive oil, maybe paprika, maybe whole chickpeas. All of those add flavour but nothing changes texture — you get a smooth dip with a smooth topping. Ikura breaks. Each one is a small burst of clean, salty sea, and it means every mouthful of an otherwise uniformly soft dip has a moment in it.

Salt, sea, and a burst against something creamy. That is exactly what the bitterness of a full-sesame tahini was providing, arrived at from the opposite direction. It is also a habit across our menu — we use three different roes in three different ways, which is the subject of the taramasalata piece.

How to eat it, and what to order with it

Pita, ordered per piece, and a spoon. Do not be shy about the ratio of roe to hummus — drag through the top rather than digging under it, or the last third of the bowl is plain.

Order something hot alongside. This dip is cool, dense and rich; on its own by the fifth mouthful it starts to feel like a lot. Against the charred Brussel sprouts it comes alive, because hot-crisp-bitter and cool-soft-sweet are the two halves of the same sentence. Ordering three cold dips and no fire is the most common way to eat a mezze menu badly.

A home version (not our recipe)

We are not going to publish our build, in the same way we do not publish the toum or the kinnogomadare. What follows is an honest home approximation of the idea — nut-enriched tahini, in a hummus — written so it works in a domestic kitchen with a domestic blender. It is not what we serve.

You need: 250g dried chickpeas soaked overnight (tinned works, and the result will be looser and less sweet), half a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, 120g good tahini, 40g raw macadamias, the juice of one to two lemons, one small garlic clove, salt, and a bowl of ice water.

The method:

1. Drain the soaked chickpeas, cover with fresh water, add the bicarbonate of soda, and boil hard until they are properly soft — further than feels right, to the point where one collapses between your fingers with no resistance. Undercooked chickpeas are the single biggest reason home hummus is grainy.
2. Toast the macadamias gently until they smell nutty, then blitz them alone, for longer than you think, until they go past sand and turn to a loose butter. This step is the one people skip, and gritty macadamia will wreck the texture.
3. Blend the drained hot chickpeas with the garlic, lemon juice and salt first, before any fat goes in. Then add the tahini and the macadamia butter.
4. With the motor running, add ice water a spoon at a time until it turns pale and loosens into something that ripples. It should look too loose; it firms up as it cools.
5. Taste for salt and lemon last, once it is cold. Warm hummus tastes better seasoned than it will at the table.

Two honest notes. First, do not buy ikura for this. Good salmon roe is expensive, it is easy to buy badly, and a spoonful of very good olive oil and a pinch of flaky salt will serve a home bowl better. Second, keep the macadamia to roughly a quarter of your total tahini weight. Push it further and the sweetness takes over and the dip stops tasting like hummus at all — which we know because that is exactly what happened the first several times.

Where to eat ours

The hummus is in the mezze section at Hamilton Road and it also runs at Li’l Habibi on Haji Lane. It is one of the two dips that come up most often in write-ups about us, alongside the babaganoush — there is more on which dishes people actually order in what reviewers keep ordering, and the rest of the list is on the menu.

We are at 29 Hamilton Road, Singapore 209198, Tuesday to Sunday from 5pm, with brunch on Saturday and Sunday from 11am to 2.30pm. There are pictures of the room in the gallery, the longer story of why the menu looks like this is in five years of Habibi-san, and if you would rather someone else made it, book a table.