Tahini is an oily paste, made from crushed sesame seeds, and a pillar of any hummus recipe. You read this paper, so probably knew that. If you’re familiar with Yotam Ottolenghi’s work, you might also eat tahini with yoghurt as a dressing on grilled vegetables or meat, or perhaps – wacky – drizzled on ice-cream. At home, I know it as the jar that time forgot. It may have gone off, but, really, who can tell?
Tahini has myriad uses and more recently, in the US and to some extent here, it is being used in ways outside of the Levantine stable. Some reinventions are sacrilege (tahini martinis), others (rye, sourdough, cakes) are perhaps more morally sound.
The popularity of tahini comes as no surprise to Sarit Packer, co-founder of Honey & Co, who has been making tahini desserts with great success for years. The restaurant usually has four tahini-based sweets on the menu at any one time, rotating specialities such as a white chocolate and tahini babka (a molten cake with tahini in the centre), tahini sandwich cookies and occasionally, tahini ice-cream. She attributes its newfound success to three key components: sweetness, nuttiness and a high fat content. “This is by no means a superfood,” she says, “but there is little dairy in Middle Eastern cooking, and if you mix tahini with water it becomes dairy-like.”
Ruth Crump, who runs Nutritiously Naughty, a gluten-free-food blog (and shop) based in Cardiff, makes tahini and coconut brownies where the tahini used in place of a nut butter (it’s already a popular substitute for allergy sufferers). At Violet Cakes, a bakery in east London, they mix broken pieces of halva (a tahini-based sweet) into brownies – although getting hold of one is borderline comic since it was announced that the bakery would be making the royal wedding cake. Both brownies are buttery and rich, as they should be, but the tahini adds a granular texture and, in the case of Violet’s chocolate slab, a thick sweet and salty crust to winning effect.
In the Middle East, tahini is viewed in much the same way as Italians view olive oil. It sometimes called “white gold” and is woven into the fabric of the culture and cuisine. This can be baffling to outsiders, not least because – and I don’t mean to nitpick, but – tahini is more of a beige colour.
As my jar sits welded to my fridge shelf by its own oil, I can’t help but see it as a victim of its versatility. In fact, it was this week’s titanic showdown between Liverpool and Manchester City that led me to think of that jar. Like Liverpool midfielder James Milner, tahini can do anything: play on the left or on the right – but this has led it to be overlooked. In short, this unsung hero has been hoisted by its own pliant, oily petard. Tahini that is, not Milner.
