Hummus is not just a (heavenly) spread, you can also turn it into a sauce. I first tasted a similar dish in Borj Hammoud, one of Beirut’s busiest neighbourhood, at Abu Hassan’s for breakfast. Their dish is made of chickpeas in hummus sauce. I thought it’s a brilliant idea! So I adapted it and created this recipe. In another version, more true to Abu Hassan’s recipe, I replace the chicken with chickpeas, and the chicken stock with vegetable stock to make it completely plant-based.
Ingredients
Difficulty
For 2 persons or 4 persons as part of a mezze
- 400 gr chicken breast
- 2 pieces of lemon peel
- 1 bay leaf
- 5 black peppercorns
- 1 cube chicken stock
- 1 garlic clove
- 250 gr canned chickpeas
- 1 teaspoon ground cumin seeds, and some extra for garnish
- Juice of half a lemon
- 50 ml tahini
- Olive oil
- Nut bread or Lebanese flatbread to serve
Directions
- Place the chicken, lemon peel, peppercorns and bay leaf in a pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and cook the chicken about 40 minutes.
- Dissolve the stock cube in 250 ml hot water.
- Add the chickpeas, garlic and cumin to the stock and blitz into a puree.
- Fold the tahini and lemon juice in the mixture.
- Once the chicken is done, take it out of the water and shred it in thin, small stripes with a fork.
- Add the chicken to the sauce and mix well.
- Serve the dish luke warm with a drizzle of olive oil, a bit of cumin and the nut bread.
