[2] One of our favorite ways to serve hummus: topped with salad ingredients and, as a lunch dish, with a hard-boied egg (photo © Shaya Restaurant | NOLA).

[3] Woo hoo, Hope Foods’ chocolate hummus, shown here topped with blueberries.

[4] A hummus sandwich with Israeli salad. Check out these 20 ways to garnish a hummus sandwich (photo © Panera).

May 13th is International Hummus Day.

Over the last two decades, hummus has evolved from a mezze at Mediterranean restaurants to the hottest, most nutritious dip and spread at supermarkets nationwide. It’s the darling of nutritionists, nutritious and versatile, and a better-for-you snack.

Hummus is Arabic for chickpeas. The more long-form name for what we refer to as hummus is hummus bi tahina, chickpeas with tahini. Tahini is a paste made of toasted, hulled sesame seeds, which can be joyed as a dip on its own.

The recipe for hummus is simple: chickpeas, tahini, and seasonings (including garlic), mashed and puréed*.

> International Hummus Day is May 13.

> National Taco Day is the first Tuesday in October.

Below:

> The history of hummus.

> 18 delicious hummus recipes.

> The different types of mezze.

Elsewhere on The Nibble:

recipe is easy, once you found a store with tahini).

But since the hummus renaissance, stores have been sagging under the weight of so many brands and so many flavors. We’ve counted more than two dozen flavors among different brands. Our two personal favorites are horseradish and black olive, which we found at Trader Joe’s.

But, we like everything. So we were very pleased to receive samples of a new brand from Hope Foods. If you head to the website now, you can enter to win a year’s supply of hummus.
 
 
HOPE FOODS ORGANIC HUMMUS

There are 11 flavors of hummus. We tried three of them, all especially delicious.

First, the consistency is wonderful, like well-mashed homemade hummus.

While we enjoy the ultra-smooth texture of big brands like Tribe, we welcome the return of toothsome texture, like Grandma used to make (if your grandma’s ancestry was in the eastern Mediterranean).

Second, the flavor selection is a bit more interesting, with black garlic, Thai coconut curry, and spicy avocado hummus (the most popular flavor).

The line is preservative-free, certified Gluten-Free, Non-GMO Certified, OU kosher, and USDA Organic. There’s a store locator on the website.
 
 
HOPE HUMMUS FLAVORS

Currently, the line of hummus includes:

 
Plus Dessert Hummus

 
While we haven’t had Hope’s chocolate hummus, we have had other brands: Thumbs up!

The company also makes guacamole, which we look forward to trying.

“Spread” the word!
 

Chickpeas, sesame, lemon, and garlic have been eaten in the Levant† for millennia. Though widely consumed, chickpeas were cooked in stews and other hot dishes. Puréed chickpeas eaten cold with tahini do not appear before the Abbasid period (750 to 1517 C.E.) in Egypt and the Levant.

The earliest known recipes for a dish similar to hummus bi tahina appear in 13th-century cookbooks from Cairo.

Some food historians believe the dish appeared a century earlier, prepared by Saladin, the first sultan of the Ayyubid dynasty (1174–1193). (If so, it was more likely created by a cook in Saladin’s kitchen, the idea of the warlord Saladin-as-cook being tough to swallow.)

Recipes for cold purée of chickpeas without tahini, but with vinegar, oil, pickled lemons, herbs, and spices (but no garlic), appear in medieval cookbooks; as do recipes with nuts vinegar (though not lemon), with many spices and herbs. [source]

Whomever and however, we’re grateful that it came to be part of our [almost] daily diet,
 
 
WHAT ARE MEZZE: THE DIFFERENT TYPES

Mezze (MEH-zay) or meze is the singular form for a number of small dishes served in the Middle East to accompany drinks (add an “s” for the plural form in English).

In some countries, an assorted mezze plate is served as an appetizer. In Greece, this appetizer platter is also called a pikilia.

Each country has its favorites. The ones most often found in the U.S. are:

[5] A delicious mezze plate: babaganoush, feta, hummus, olives, pita and a local touch, pickled carrots—all of which you can purchase ready-made (photo © Good Eggs).

[6] Hummus itself is gluten-free, but not the pita. This gluten-free hummus plate created by Glutino Foods has gluten-free pretzels and crackers instead. You can find gluten-free pita and recipes to bake your own online (photo © Glutino Foods).

 
They are typically served along with Greek-style olives and pita, or other flatbread.
 

[5] A mezze platter, or pikidilia in Greek: hummus, tyrokafteri, tzatziki, and tabbouleh (Abacus Photo).
 
 
MORE HUMMUS RECIPES

 
________________

*Some brands also add olive oil.

†The Levant is an English term that first appeared in 1497. It originally referred to the “Mediterranean lands east of Italy.” The historical area comprises modern-day Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria. Among other popular foods, Levantine cuisine gave birth to baklava, falafel, kebabs, mezze (including tabbouleh, hummus, and baba ghanoush), pita and za’atar, among other dishes that are enjoyed in the U.S. and around the world.
 

CHECK OUT WHAT’S HAPPENING ON OUR HOME PAGE, THENIBBLE.COM.

[1] A beautiful layered salad in a wine tumbler (photo courtesy Riedel Japan). [2] Riedel’s O series tumbler for red wine (photo courtesy Riedel). [3] How many different ways can you use them? See our list (photo Riedel | Facebook). [4] A classic layered salad (photo courtesy Kraft). [5] The most recent layered salad trend: in a Mason jar (here’s the recipe from the California Avocado Commission).

Yesterday’s tip was to use salad as a soup garnish.

Today we’re taking a slightly different turn.

Serve an elegant layered salad in (photo #1) a wine tumbler, like Riedel’s O Red Wine Tumbler (photo #2).

In fact, when you’re not drinking wine from the tumblers, you can variously use them:
 
At Breakfast

 
At Lunch

 
At Dinner

 
 
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A WINE TUMBLER & A WINE GLASS?

Like its entire line of fine glassware for wine and spirits, Riedel’s wine tumblers are sophisticated glassware engineered for different grape varietals, to deliver the maximum flavors and aromas. The shape of the bowl and mouth direct the wine to different areas of the palate.

Now, to the stemmed wine glass that has been around for many centuries. It is meant to be held by the stem, not by the bowl.

Stemware was created for elegance, so the heat from one’s hand didn’t warm the wine in the bowl, and so one’s sticky fingers didn’t leave grease marks on the glass.

But, with the increasing casual that has developed over the last 30 years, few people know or care about etiquette, and most people hold their stemware by the bowl.

If you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em; so Riedel, the world’s greatest wine glass maker, decided to give people what they want: a bowl with no stem.

The O Stemless Tumblers line did so well, that Riedel has added lines with etched designs and colored bottoms.

They’re an affordable gift. Check out the choices at Amazon.

THE HISTORY OF LAYERED SALAD

Try as we did, we couldn’t find a detailed reference to layered salad before the 1970s. A 2000 article in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel refers to a seven layer salad as a fat-laden salad that “helped give salads of the 1950s a bad name” [source].

Ingredients are layered in a glass bowl, with the varied layer colors and textures providing eye appeal. Made for barbecues, parties, picnics, potlucks, it was/is assembled ahead of time and is easy to transport. It can feed a crowd, and was very popular with said crowd.

The layers—as few or as many as the cook desires—commonly include:

 
The original dressing may have been mayonnaise-based or a mayo-sour cream combination. Depending on the cook, bottled Italian or ranch dressing can be employed.

Personally, we skip the shredded cheddar and use a mayo-sour cream-chunky blue cheese dressing.

Part of our job entails keeping on top of culinary innovations around the world, to see might be interesting for the home cook.

While a soup-topped salad may not sound like an innovation, we don’t come across it often. Usually it’s in the form of a small vegetable garnish.

Today’s tip was inspired by Botanica, a new vegetarian-focused restaurant in Los Angeles (photo #3).

Take your favorite chunky soup and add the salad on top, lightly dressed with oil plus vinegar, lemon, lime or orange juice.

What kind of salad?

Whatever you like, as long as its lightweight. Tomatoes or anything heavy will sink, and only work with a very shallow bowl of soup.

Here’s our list:

 
Leave off the other logical contenders—broccoli florets, cheese, pepitas, e.g., and make this topping about the salad.
 
 
THE HISTORY OF SOUP

The history of soup is almost as old as the history of cooking. First: discover fire. You can place raw food over flames or on the hot embers. Then, invent a vessel in which to cook a liquid.

Add water to the container, toss in whatever vegetables you’ve foraged, cook it over the fire, and voilà, soup: a hot, nutritious meal.

The first containers for cooking over the fire were cleaned out animal hides. By the Neolithic era, rough pottery had appeared; but the pots could not withstand the direct heat of the fire. Instead, heated stones were tossed in to raise the temperature of the water and cook the food.

By then Bronze age, at metal cauldrons appeared in the Mediterranean, and spread. This was a tipping point:

[1] A nice garnish, but hardly a salad. Here’s the recipe from Sunset magazine. [2] Clear gazpacho topped with salad, a twist from the creative chef Scott Conant. [3] Go big or go home with those greens: a “real” salad atop the soup at Botanica Restaurant in LA. Everything on the menu is equally wonderful. [4] This handsome labor of love is from Apples And Butter. Here’s the recipe.

Soup was the evening meal of the less affluent, who poured broth onto yesterday’s bread (the ancestor of modern soup croutons) and added whatever else they had.

The affluent had soup, too, but they didn’t need it to make stale bread palatable. It began to be fashionable to serve the liquid broth on its own (consommé), and many different types of soup began to evolve. By the early 18th century, a bowl of soup assumed its present-day role as the first course of a meal. [source]

Soup evolved into the categories of soup we know today (the chef Escoffier was first to categorized all French soups).

The 19th century saw portable soups: canned or dehydrated, soups. These supplied cowboy chuck wagons, the military, wagon trains and other travelers, as well as the home pantry.

The late 20th century brought us microwave-ready soup in disposable containers. One can only guess what science will produce going forward.

Whatever it is, it needs a garnish!
 
MORE ON SOUP GARNISHES

 
Also check out the different types of soup in our Soup Glossary.

[1] Strawberry balamic pie. [2] Balsamic vinegar (photo Pompeian | Facebook).

In Italy, strawberries are often served for dessert with balsamic vinegar. Some of the most expensive, aged balsamics are served this way, with a few precious droplets bringing more excitement between the two ingredients (the whole is greater than the sum of its parts).

Fine balsamic is also served with aged Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, so sophisticated foodies should consider some crumbles as a plate garnish (crumble your own from a wedge-don’t buy crumbled parmesan).

One of our favorite bakers, Audra, The Baker Chick, sent us this recipe for If you like to bake, or simply look at beautiful cakes and pies, sign up for her emails.

“The original recipe for this beauty comes from Four and Twenty Blackbirds, a wonderful pie shop in Brooklyn that I used to get to enjoy back in the day. I didn’t follow it exactly, partly because of what I had on hand and partly because of my own pie-making experience; but it was pretty darn amazing either way.

“When it comes to thickening berry pies, I’m an instant tapioca girl. I really believe nothing works better. I love a juicy pie, but not a soupy one and tapioca really is the best. Happy Spring—now go make this lovely pie!”

It’s lovely for Mother’s Day, and all through the summer.
 
RECIPE: STRAWBERRY BALSAMIC PIE

Ingredients

1. MAKE the crust with your favorite recipe. Audra added ¼ cup cider vinegar to the ice water and thinks it made the crust extra flaky. While the crust is chilling, prepare the filling.

2. PLACE the strawberries in a large bowl, sprinkle with the sugar and toss gently. Let sit for about 20 minutes; then stir in the apple, balsamic, brown sugar, tapioca, pepper and salt. Toss to combine and allow flavors to sit and get juicy.

3. ROLL out one of the chilled pie crusts and drape it over the bottom of the pie pan. Pop it into the freezer for a few minutes while you roll out the second crust. If you want to try a lattice crust, use a straight edge to cut the strips.

4. POUR the filling into the chilled crust and add the top crust. Trim and crimp the edges of the crust and pop it into the fridge or freezer while you preheat the oven to 425°F, with a rack positioned in the middle. When oven is ready…

5. BRUSH the crust with the egg wash and sprinkle it with sugar. Line a cookie sheet with foil and place the pie on top. Place the cookie sheet on the middle rack.

6. BAKE for 20-25 minutes or until the crust is beginning to turn golden. Then, reduce the heat to 375°F and bake for another 35 to 40 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown and the pie is juicy and bubbly.
  

May is National Egg Month, a time for some consciousness-raising.

We look for Certified Humane eggs and don’t mind paying the premium for them. You’ve no doubt heard the horror stories of mass egg production.

We buy from Pete and Gerry’s whenever we can: eggs produced on small family farms with a commitment to the humane treatment of the chickens.

Pete & Gerry’s eggs are also USDA Organic, OU kosher and B-Corporation Certified: committed to sustainability.

They shared these fowl facts with us:

 
That’s good news, because…

These eggs are all natural in color. The colors come from different breeds of hens. Those breeds don’t produce eggs as economically as breeds that produce white and brown eggs, so they are not sold commercially, except by some farm stands (photo courtesy The Egg Farm). [2] This tufted arcauna chicken, originally from South America, lays pale blue eggs (photo courtesy Awesome Araucana.

 
TIPS

 
THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF EGGS

If you think of eggs as either white or brown, check out the different types of eggs in our Egg Glossary. There are 10 choices in chicken eggs alone!
 
SOME EGG-CELLENT LINKS