Many years ago in 1999 I was in the UK and more specifically in Brighton. I really liked that town and I was going there often.. and those who know me well know the reason for that as well. As well as visiting some villages in Norway... 
Anyway... I was staying with friends and the first night while we were walking to go out and have dinner at a restaurant, they told me that where we were going I will try the best hummus ever! Wonderful I said, but what is hummus? What do you mean what is hummus Norman asked. It is a Greek dish!! 

I have never had it I replied... but I figured that it is a very regional dish and maybe I have never tasted it. 
Anyway... we went to the restaurant and tried hummus... I was not sooo impressed as it had tahini that I was not too crazy about it and at the time I was not as much into cooking. But when I got back to Athens I researched things a bit more. So hummus is a dip made from chickpeas, tahini, garlic, lemon and spices... And even though it is a dish from the levant everyone thinks (at least in UK) that it is Greek. Maybe because the cooks at the Greek restaurants there are not actually Greek or even if they are you will not remove a dish when it is really good and people buy it. 

In Arabic actually Hummus means chickpea so if you want to refer to Hummus you actually have to say Hummus with tahini... But in the rest of the world it it is just Hummus.. 
Depending on where you have it it can be very different and the ingredients used can be quite diversified... Some people use tahini, some not. Some make it with yogurt instead of tahini, or add butter instead of oil, they add pasturma, eggs etc.. and as for the spices used well they vary soooo much even from village to village in Syria.. And the spelling of hummus can be different.. you can find it as Houmous or Hummus or with a few more different spelling types depending where you are in the world.. 

My version is a bit playful as I use an ingredients that it is not used often... 
I also read a recipe where they do not use lemon juice but instead they use the wonderful preserved lemons that they make in the Middle East! Now that is something I need to try.. Problem is I do not have any and they take more than a month to prepare.. So, if you have any to spare let me know.. 

Also I have to add that in Greece it is not so easy to find boiled chickpeas in a tin. So what I do is to boil chickpeas and after I cool them down and drain them I put them in plastic bags and keep them in the freezer so it is easy to make hummus when ever I have guests. 
From the one pound of dry chickpeas I usually get about 3-4 bags weighing 300 grams boiled. And of course I use the chickpeas from Dicotylon! 

So here is my version of Hummus and I hope you will give it a try and like it!