Fattet Hummus: Crisp Bread, Warm Chickpeas, Garlic Yoghurt

Fatteh comes from the Arabic verb fatta, to tear or break apart, and the broken thing is bread. That tells you what kind of dish this is: one invented to use up what was already going stale, in kitchens where throwing bread away was not an option.

What it became is a layered plate of crisp pita, warm garlicky chickpeas and a cool tahini yoghurt poured over the top, finished with toasted nuts and a spoonful of browned butter. It appears across Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, and it is most often eaten at breakfast or brunch, though it turns up at lunch and at iftar throughout Ramadan.

The version with chickpeas is fattet hummus, and it is the one most people meet first. It takes twenty minutes and it demands that you assemble it at the last possible moment, because the entire dish is a race between crisp bread and wet sauce.

Ingredients

Serves 4 as a generous breakfast or 6 as a mezze. About 25 minutes if you use tinned chickpeas.

• 3 large pita or Arabic flatbreads, preferably a day old
• 2 tbsp olive oil, for the bread
• 500 g cooked chickpeas (2 x 400 g tins, drained), or 250 g dried chickpeas soaked and cooked
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp salt for the chickpeas
• 150 ml of the chickpea cooking liquid or tinned liquid
• 400 g Greek yoghurt, at room temperature
• 3 tbsp tahini, well stirred
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed to a paste with a pinch of salt
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp fine salt for the sauce
• 50 g butter
• 50 g pine nuts or flaked almonds
• 1 tsp sumac
• 1 tbsp chopped parsley
• A pinch of paprika or Aleppo pepper

Method

1. Heat the oven to 200C fan. Tear the pita into rough pieces about 4 cm across, toss with the 2 tbsp olive oil and spread on a baking tray in one layer.
2. Bake for 6 to 8 minutes, turning once, until deeply golden and properly dry. Take a piece out and let it cool for 20 seconds before testing it: it should snap, not bend. Underdone bread turns to paste on contact with the yoghurt.
3. Warm the chickpeas in a small pan with the cumin, the 1/2 tsp salt and the 150 ml chickpea liquid. Simmer gently for 5 minutes. They should be hot and slightly soupy, not dry. Keep them warm.
4. Make the sauce. Whisk the yoghurt, tahini, crushed garlic, lemon juice and 1/2 tsp salt together until completely smooth. It should pour thickly, like double cream. If it is stiff, loosen it with 1 or 2 tbsp of the warm chickpea liquid.
5. Taste the sauce and correct it now. It wants to be noticeably garlicky and clearly lemony, because the bread and chickpeas underneath are mild and will mute it.
6. Toast the nuts. Melt the butter in a small pan over a medium heat, add the pine nuts and cook, stirring, for 3 to 4 minutes until both the nuts and the butter turn nut brown. Take it off the heat the moment it smells toasted. Browned butter goes from perfect to acrid in about fifteen seconds.
7. Now assemble, and work quickly. Spread the crisp bread across a wide shallow serving dish.
8. Spoon the hot chickpeas and a little of their liquid over the bread, letting some pieces stay exposed.
9. Pour the yoghurt sauce over the top, covering most but not all of the surface.
10. Pour over the browned butter and nuts, then scatter with sumac, parsley and a pinch of paprika. Take it to the table immediately.

The timing problem, and how to beat it

Fatteh has a working life of about five minutes. After that the bread beneath the sauce softens, and while soft fatteh still tastes good, the textural contrast that justifies the dish is gone.