SYRIAN STYLE FATTET HUMMUS | FATTEH | STALE BREAD WITH CHIC PEAS AND A YOGURT SAUCE

If you’ve never had Syrian style fetat hamos, you are in for a treat. This dish is exactly what comes to mind when I think of family meals. You place a big platter in the middle of the table and everybody enjoys it together communal style. The collective sounds of spoons hitting the dish that it’s served in, the crunch of the vegetables being eaten on the side, and the combined silence of everyone in the room which says so much more than words could ever say. Every region in the Levant has their own version of this dish, but what we all share in common is our love for it. In my family’s version, the sauce is made up of boiled chickpeas, water, salt, lemon juice, cumin, pine, and plain yogurt. It’s basically a thinned out hummus, but with the addition of plain yogurt. So, yes, you could use leftover hummus as a base for this recipe, just adding some yogurt and water to thin it out. Now, while it’s common to find recipes that call for fried bread, this dish was actually created as an innovative way of using up stale bread that’s dried in the sun before it has a chance to go bad. You soak the bread in the chickpea water in order to soften it. And you add a bunch of chickpeas with the chickpea water as well. Then you add in the sauce and mix it well. And in recipes that use fried bread, you won’t find people mixing in the sauce like this because they try to preserve the texture of that crunchy pita bread. But for us, it’s meant to be soft and creamy. Ground beef is optional. If you wanted to keep it vegetarian, you could leave it out, but I personally prefer the extra protein. What’s not optional is almonds or pine nuts toasted and lots of ghee and drizzled over the top. I usually like to garnish with chopped parsley on top, but Baba said no. And whatever Bubba says, he did allow me a parsley flour for look, so I’ll take it. Sprinkle some Aleppo pepper and or black pepper and elsah.