If you’re going to have hummus—which may be commonplace, but never prosaic—then you might as well go as close to the source as possible. Its connection to place is indelible—as Palestinian chef and cookbook author Sami Tamimi puts it, “hummus with tahini is the intellectual property of Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria”. Here, in this recipe for hummus qawarma from the Palestinian cook and food writer Yasmin Khan’s beautiful book Zaitoun, it takes you from a dip to a feast, without too much more effort than opening a gritty tub of supermarket hummus. Useful and delicious though that may be, this dish is, comparatively, the culinary equivalent of going from a cold ankle-deep paddling pool to the warm surf of the Pacific Ocean at sunset. Celebrating the food of Palestine is not something I do lightly—especially when countless people within its borders are being starved and violently disconnected from their families, culture, food, and basic safety. As well as celebrating, I am acknowledging and upholding—this cuisine can’t be erased and neither can the people. But I am lucky to eat it, and so are you.

Meat, like dairy, is in an especially expensive rut this year—and a not insignificant portion of my time with my family over Matariki was spent yelling about the abominable, bloodthirsty state of food prices, with the solutions ranging from “let’s start a co-op” to “let’s start a boycott against the supermarket duopoly” to “I, personally, would simply not inflate prices” (you can guess which economic mastermind said the latter, though I do maintain that I am correct and should be in charge of such matters.) This recipe makes a small quantity of lamb feel plentiful and feast-like; especially when buttressed up against the modestly-priced chickpeas in the hummus. Adding to the sense of luxury is the butter-silk hummus texture, achieved by using a high-speed blender specifically. It completely pulverises the otherwise-pesky chickpea skins and, much like last week’s recipe for grapefruit posset, gives you a finish that suggests occlusive lotion. If you only have a food processor as your main blitzing implement, you’ll just need to blend it more patiently and accept a degree of nubbliness; still delicious.

Lamb’s flavour, perhaps more than any other meat, has a kind of shockingly fulsome flavour—sweet, oleaginous, darkly savoury, hearty and earthy yet banquet-like in its richness. The gentle citrus jolt of lemon and sumac, and even turmeric—which always has a lemony edge to my tastebuds—are flavours that lamb wears well. If you’ve grown up in more of a meat-and-three-veg framework, recipes like these are a useful way to reframe meat as a complementary component of a meal, rather than an inarguable, standalone slab. That being said, there’s ways to make this cheaper—not least by doubling the quantity of relatively cheap hummus—and indeed, ways to make it vegetarian, skirting the meat thing altogether. And though replacing the lamb with tofu seems like a straightforward option, I suggest you consider carrots, cut into batons, marinated then fried until burnished brown, and piled into the centre of the hummus. You could also use this marinade, uncooked, on a handful of plump, green olives—or perhaps dry-toast some cashews, slivered almonds, and pumpkin seeds before slicking them with the marinade ingredients and tumbling them across the hummus.

By the way, the hummus that appears in these photographs was made in relative heedless haste, in that I was trying to use the few spare daylight hours available in my free time to hurriedly shoot several recipes at once; I promise the hummus of this recipe is spackle-smooth and billowing.

For more recipes celebrating the stunning food of Palestine, I recommend kefte bi tahini (an elegant option for the meat and potatoes crowd), this zibdiyit gambari which I have made so many times since, this m’tabbal qarae, or, for the summer-enjoying northern hemisphere readers rich in tomatoes, this banadora wa sumac.

And if I may, a reminder that you can sign up here to hear irregular and unobtrusive updates and details about my forthcoming 2025 debut novel, Hoods Landing. Find out more, which you probably already know, at my official author website.

Hummus Qawarma [Hummus with spiced lamb]

Plush, billowing hummus draped with seared lamb marinated in enlivening spices. With a little heavy machinery—in this case, a high-speed blender—your regular can of chickpeas will become pure velvet, though I should add that the original recipe uses cooked, dried chickpeas which will always taste better. My lazy option does mean this lavish-tasting dish comes together surprisingly quickly (especially surprising given how wordy my instructions are.) Adapted lightly from Yasmin Khan’s book Zaitoun, Recipes and Stories from the Palestinian Kitchen, which I have shared recipes from on here before and highly recommend getting hold of.

The lamb

• 300g lamb fillet—leg, or neck, ideally something with a little visible fat—you can also use minced lamb or leave it out altogether, see the notes below and blog above for more details
• 1 garlic clove
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice (you can use one half of the lemon for the marinade, and the other half for the hummus)
• 1 tablespoon olive oil, plus more for cooking
• 1/2 teaspoon sumac
• 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/4 teaspoon turmeric
• sea salt and black pepper
• 3 tablespoons pine nuts

The hummus

• 1 x 400g tin chickpeas in brine
• 2 garlic cloves
• 2 tablespoons of lemon juice
• A hearty pinch of salt
• 3 heaped tablespoons hulled tahini
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin

1: Start with the marinade—slice the 300g lamb into small strips and pieces. Mince or finely slice the garlic clove, and mix it in a bowl with the two tablespoons lemon juice, the tablespoon of olive oil, the half teaspoon each of sumac and dried oregano, and the quarter teaspoon of turmeric. Finally, add a good pinch of salt and pepper and tip in the sliced lamb, stirring it into the marinade. Let it sit for 30 mins at room temperature, or up to an hour in the fridge, covered.

2: While the lamb is marinating, make the hummus. Loosely drain the can of chickpeas—leaving a splash of brine behind—and blitz them along with the two garlic cloves and two tablespoons of lemon juice in a high-speed blender. Pause and scrape down the sides occasionally, blending until the chickpeas are super smooth. If using a food processor, you’ll simply have to process it for much longer, but the smooth texture isn’t impossible and either way it will still taste delicious.

3: Once the chickpeas are thoroughly blitzed, add a hearty pinch of salt, the three heaped tablespoons of tahini, and the half teaspoon of cumin, and blend again until completely, utterly velvety-smooth. Taste to see if it needs more salt, or the last gasp of juice squeezed from the lemons. If not consuming right away, store in the fridge in an airtight container. This tastes best when the hummus isn’t entirely fridge-cold, so if you’re making it ahead, take it out twenty minutes before serving. To that end, if you’ve refrigerated the lamb, take that out of the fridge for about ten minutes before frying.

4: Toast the three tablespoons of pine nuts in a pan until just golden and fragrant, and set aside. In the same pan (and you can do them concurrently on two separate pans but if I don’t have that kind of hardware, why should you) heat a little more olive oil and sear the marinated lamb—don’t move it around too much as it fries, so it has time to get browned and burnished. This shouldn’t take more than five to seven minutes.

5: Spread the hummus on a serving dish, using the back of a spoon to push it out and create a pooled indent in the middle. Spoon over the lamb and any pan juices; sprinkle over the toasted pine nuts, and scatter with a little extra sumac, and a swirl of olive oil.

Serves 2-3 heartily with a robust salad and some flatbreads; you could, however, consider a halved roasted kūmara or small butternut whose bellies can be loaded up with this hummus. As part of a loaded table of mezze and small plates this will go much further, and it will go significantly further as a main dish if you augment the hummus quantities but leave the lamb as is; in this case however I’d make the hummus as two separate batches, instead of cramming everything into one blender.

Notes:

• You can happily use minced lamb instead; in which case you could reduce the quantity down to 200g if you wanted, and remove the olive oil from the marinade ingredients.
• Yasmin Khan’s recipe also uses a pinch of Aleppo pepper or, failing that, cayenne in the lamb marinade—I have left this out each time I’ve made it but am noting it here in case you, quite reasonably, want to include it.

music lately:

Requiem by Killing Joke. Am not qualified enough to say if there is a tremolo effect or if the guitars are merely chugging along like someone flicking their car headlights on and off but either way it makes me feel like a sentient leather jacket, up to no good.

Unless by the Pale Fountains, it starts inauspiciously with a sort of airy, gentle, synthy bossa nova affect and then suddenly the chorus sails upwards diagonally—and then here come those jaunty horns!

Rose’s Turn by Audra McDonald from the latest Broadway revival of Gypsy, for some weird reason, you can’t find her Tony performance on youtube—but in fact this [cough] recording of her singing it in context in late May is so textured and layered, finding new, shattering, frenzied and raw depths in this oft-revived role that you can feel her in front of you, and I recommend sitting through that full minute of applause at the end. I, for one, think she should’ve got that seventh Tony!

Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops by Cocteau Twins; I first heard this on a John Peel compilation disc that I got out of the library in 2006 which is a long time ago and yet somewhat late to the party at the same time, I could feel the song building new neural pathways in my brain with its woozy guitar and gibberish lyrics; songs may come and go but you never forget your first Cocteau Twins.

PS: As we enjoy our food we can’t forget those going violently without it. Words fail me when it comes to Gaza but—NZ-based humanitarian org ReliefAid’s Gaza Appeal continues to work to deliver water sourced and treated from within Gaza so give it if you’ve got it. Feeling hopeless is kind of a luxury but as a response to the world, hardly a surprise. If you want to feel in control of something remember that the absence of your dollars can have power. Boycott Zine Aotearoa has helpfully put together two comprehensive free zines so you can quickly see who to studiously avoid when buying food, drinks, household items and beauty products.