Or raw sesame butter (like peanut butter, only made from sesame seeds), which I suspect most of you already know, but here’s a blast from the past anyway:
From Mollie Katzen’s Moosewood Cookbook, originally published in 1977:
“Tahini (raw sesame paste) is available in natural food stores, in some specialty groceries, and in the imported foods section of many grocery stores.”
It makes me giggle because these days, I’ve never had a problem finding tahini–and this includes our big-box box-food-saturated Queens Stop ‘n Shop (although, yes it is in the “Middle Eastern” foods section near the “Asian” stuff, so I guess that qualifies as the “imported foods section,” despite the fact that sriracha chili sauce is made in California. But I digress…) Perhaps we’ve come a long way since the seventies? Anyway, tahini is kind of like peanut butter, but just a bit more bitter–a quality that you might be able to mitigate with a little salt. You have to mix it up like peanut butter to incorporate the solids with the oil, but it tastes lovely and gives anything that hit of umami that a sauce or dressing might sometimes need. That’s also why hummus tastes so good (again, if you’ve never made your own hummus, you’ve got to try it. It’s a cinch, you don’t need that many ingredients, and you can make it exactly to your liking)–and why it’s so much better on a sandwich than mayonnaise.
RECIPE: 3 Tahini-Based Dips/Sauces
Have an excellent weekend! See you Monday!
Filed under: Clean Food Daily, hummus, nuts, raw, sauces, sesame butter, snack, tahini
