Food is no fun if you don’t occasionally change it up a bit and step outside your normal cooking routine. Branching out to new foods doesn’t automatically mean eating fried bugs or animal organs. It can be so much simpler.
As I mentioned in one of my first columns, tahini is a sesame paste often used in Middle Eastern dishes. You may have eaten hummus with tahini mixed in or falafel topped with tahini sauce. It’s a really versatile ingredient that hasn’t yet made its way to everyone’s kitchens in the United States.
If you can get your hands on a jar — I found mine at Bloomingfoods — you’ll notice tahini is a lot like natural peanut butter in that it separates and needs some mixing to smooth it out. From there, it’s really easy to make a delicious sauce that only needs a few ingredients and can be poured over anything, from salads to grilled meat.
All you need to do is blend together 1/2 cup tahini with 1/4 - 1/2 cup water — depending on how thick or thin you want it — 2 tablespoons lemon juice, 1 tablespoon garlic and a pinch of salt. Adjust as you blend and make it your own. It’s that easy to make a delicious, all-purpose sauce that will remain fresh while in the fridge for a couple of weeks.
A recipe I made this past weekend has also become one of my new go-to’s for baking. Yes, tahini can be used for desserts, too. I found a salted chocolate chip cookie recipe that sounded amazing.
I didn’t have any unsalted butter on hand, so I used salted butter instead and worried the whole time that it would ruin the final product. Fortunately, it didn’t, and it even added the perfect amount of extra saltiness so that I didn't need to top the cookies with sea salt as the recipe called for. I also reduced the amount of chocolate by half because I thought that two cups was too much. To all the chocolate lovers, feel free to use the amount of chocolate your heart desires.
Besides these small changes, this recipe was very smooth. The batter combined easily. The cookies didn’t hardly spread in the oven, and the cooking time was fairly accurate. After running them by my roommates and trying them myself, I can say the tahini cookies were delicious. This recipe had the perfect balance of salty, sweet and chewy. The tahini slightly altered the taste, giving the cookies have a nuttier bite to them.
So, if you’re in the market to take tahini for a trial run, these two recipes are practically foolproof and guaranteed to be tasty. Tahini is a very neutral ingredient, so don’t be afraid to throw it in as a replacement for typical choices such as salad dressings or dips.
Consider expanding your kitchen repertoire little by little with versatile ingredients such as tahini. Your cooking skills and tastes won’t change overnight, but you’ll slowly open up your palate to new flavors and possibilities.
