This recipe for tahini sauce is the real deal. I have eaten so many versions of the classic tahini sauce it was hard to tell what was the real thing. This recipe is from my second favorite Mediterranean book Zavah, by Chef Michael Solomonov, my first will always be Ottolenghi.
I had the opportunity to eat at Zavah restaurant in Philadelphia sometime back, and couldn’t stop thinking about that meal. I probably lived under some sort of foodie rock because I never knew he had a book and revealed his tahini, hummus and other amazing recipes. I just happened to stumble upon while casually browsing cookbooks on Amazon and Zavah came up. I ordered it right away and downloaded it on my kindle.
The book is fabulous filled with amazing recipes. My favorite part reading about his life and pages of step by step process of making the most amazing tahini sauce.
- 1 head garlic
- ¾ cup lemon juice from 2-3 lemons
- kosher salt
- 1 1/2 cups tahini paste
- ½ teaspoon ground cumin
- Seperate a head of garlic with your hands, remove the loose papery skin, you don’t have to peel but I did. Add it to the food processor. Add the lemon juice and a little salt.
- Blend for a few seconds until you have a coarse puree.
- Let the mixture stand for 10 minutes to let the garlic mellow.
- Pour the mixture through a fine-mesh strainer set over a large mixing bowl, pressing on the solids to extract as much liquid as possible.
- Discard the solids.
- Add the tehina to the strained lemon juice in the bowl, along with the cumin and 1 teaspoon of the salt.
- Whisk the mixture together until smooth you can continue using the food processo, adding ice water ( for better emulsification), a few tablespoons at a time, to thin it out. The sauce will lighten in color as you whisk. When the tehina seizes up, keep adding ice water, bit by bit (about 1 ½ cups in total), whisking vigorously until you have a perfectly smooth, creamy, thick sauce.
- Taste and add up to 1 ½ teaspoons more salt and cumin if you like. If you’re not using the sauce immediately,
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