Hummus versions abound, but most-except for some Turkish recipes-are made with chickpeas and tahini. Hummus means “chickpea” in Arabic, and it is taken very seriously in the Middle East, where people debate questions such as whether the chickpeas should be peeled before pureeing or whether chilling the tahini ruins its texture.

Sometimes I like to leave out the chickpeas and experiment with ingredients such as white beans, avocados, pumpkins, squash, and parsnips. This, of course, breaks the rules since technically hummus is not hummus without chickpeas. Oleana’s customers, though, understand why I call this recipe hummus when they taste it.

I purée parsnips in place of the chickpeas, but I flavor the dish with the traditional garlic, lemon, cumin, and tahini. The parsnip’s texture is perfect for hummus: it is smooth and creamy, just like chickpeas, but has twice as much flavor.

In New England, parsnips are the first spring crop, even before spinach, nettles, or fiddleheads. Farmers like to harvest parsnips after they’ve “wintered over” because the freezing ground makes the sugars more intense. The sweetness of the parsnips paired with the bitter, nutty tahini and earthy cumin is just divine.

If I’m serving this dish to a group as a mezze, I mound the creamy parsnips onto a platter and make a well in the center, which I fill with tahini sauce, and then serve it with crick-cracks or pita bread. This dish is also a wonderful accompaniment to the beef shish kebobs with sumac onions and parsley butter; my guests pass the tahini sauce around the table like gravy at Thanksgiving.

I happen to like the dramatic visual contrast of the white parsnip puree holding the dark tahini sauce, but if this presentation seems too fussy to you, you can combine the tahini with the parsnips before serving.

If you serve parsnip hummus as an hors d’oeuvre, try pairing it with a Falanghina from Italy; the flavors in the wine have just enough bitterness to set off the tahini and sweet parsnip.