WHAT I DO WITH
WORDS HARRIET BOUCHER | IMAGES ASHLEE DECAIRES
There’s a good chance that if you’ve made hummus at home before, you have a jar of tahini lying around in the fridge. But have you thought of how else to use it? I asked a few of my local insiders about how they use tahini. Tahini is a smooth paste made from grinding hulled and lightly toasted sesame seeds. The earliest mentions of this ancient paste date back to 3500BC. It is hugely popular in the Middle Eastern PAGE 70 | WWW.NOURISHMAGAZINE.CO.NZ
food scene and is also widely used in Israeli, Chinese, Korean, Japanese and African cuisines. It would be rude not to mention the importance of tahini in hummus. Creamy, nutty and rich, hummus would be bland without tahini. Along with smoothness and depth of flavour, tahini adds a range of vitamins and minerals to the already nutritious dip. Tahini has the same effect in baba ganoush, a smoky eggplant dip. Lisa Quarrie from Hayes Common told me that “many people mistakenly add oil for creaminess, but it’s the tahini that will give you that and keep your dips light”.
