Open your eyes to taste of SESAME
Seed straddles line between savory and sweet
Few ingredients cross as many international boundaries as the sesame seed — the ambassador of seeds, if you will. Classic but trending (Trader Joe’s currently offers at least 20 sesame items from salad toppers to coconut sesame clusters), sesame oils, pastes and spice blends crowd the shelves of international grocery store aisles, and chefs and home cooks are cooking with them in exciting new and traditional ways.
Sesame seeds originated in Egypt or Persia — the sesame bush with its mini banana-shaped seed pods grows wild in tropical and subtropical regions and is now cultivated globally.
The seeds made their way across continents as ancient and modern civilizations learned to cook deliciously with them, originally as a tasty, clean source of cooking oil. In the Middle East and Mediterranean, bakers coat breads with the seeds, adding protein and crunch to the predecessors of our “everything” bagel and sesametopped hamburger bun.
Sesame plays a big role in the spice blends of the world. The Middle East brings za’atar to the mix, a blend that combines sesame with tangy sumac and resinous Mediterranean oregano and marjoram — and is smeared on everything from roast chicken to pizza these days.
Since we discovered dukkah, a flavorful Egyptian blend of nuts, seeds and warm spices toasted together, we always keep a batch on hand to sprinkle generously on roasted vegetables, eggs or grilled meats and fish. At Chicago’s Cellar Door Provisions, bakers roll dukkah inside house-made puff pastry to create a sweet savory snail — the perfect sesame breakfast nosh.
In Japanese culture, sesame or goma shows up in popular spice blends like togarashi (a ubiquitous seven-spice chile table blend that happens to be great on buttered popcorn), furikake (an umamirich rice seasoning that features seaweed and often dried seafood) and even a simple sesame salt called gomashio. Japanese and Chinese cooks also prize sesame oil (lighter for cooking, darker for seasoning) and black sesame paste to deepen soups, noodle dishes, sauces and marinades.
Sesame also plays a big role in Mexican moles, and pops up in Indian cuisine, particularly from the Hyderabad region. Bagara baingan is an eggplant dish whose base is a paste made from sesame, peanuts and coconut, and til ki is a delicious sesame tamarind chutney often served with dosa.
Tahini, created by soaking, crushing and grinding the seeds, has become an essential pantry item, its nutty earthiness adding flavor and texture to classic dishes like hummus and baba ghanoush. The ever-surging popularity of Middle Eastern food has led modern cooks to experiment with using tahini as an ingredient in untraditional ways — it pairs extraordinarily with chocolate in desserts like brownies and chocolate chip cookies. We love it as a sub for peanut butter, in miso or yogurt based dressings, and folded into canned tuna with some fresh lemon juice for a no-mayo version of tuna salad.
Manhattan’s Chelsea Market boasts a business entirely devoted to sesame. Seed + Mill runs a robust tahini production, plus offers tahini goat milk soft-serve and halvah tahini milkshakes on-site. (Halvah is a byproduct of sesame oil production — sweetened and pressed into a classic confection
eaten on its own or as an ingredient — it makes a marvelous addition to caramel sauce.)
Benne, the name for sesame in the American South, came to the Low Country from Madagascar via the West African slave and spice trade. The seeds are incorporated into the region’s signature benne wafer cookies.
Sesame’s nutty flavor and unctuous texture effortlessly straddles the line between savory and sweet. At Baobing, the takeout window of Stephanie Izard’s Duck Duck Goat restaurant in Chicago, desserts are based on Taiwanese street snacks. The sesame sundae tops ice cream with a grand slam of sesame caramel, black sesame crunchies, sesame whip and fried sesame balls. Says Izard, “a drop of sesame oil in whipped cream brings this awesome nutty toasted roasty flavor,” while the restaurant’s classic caramel sauce is rendered less sweet and way more interesting with a dash of Chinese black vinegar and sesame oil.
At Chicago’s Loba Pastry + Coffee, Val Taylor makes her pepita crunch bar with an oat base and a caramelized mixed seed and nut topping that gets color and zing from black sesame, the dark version of the more common ivory seed. Caramel and sesame are great friends, as illustrated by the above, plus the sesame brittles and candies of the Middle East. In the Basque region of Spain, sesame seeds are sugared and caramelized to sprinkle on a plate of earthy native sheep and goat cheeses.
We chose Korean-style for our savory sesame recipe. These tofu and meatballs are typically packed in lunchboxes but we love to wrap them in lettuce leaves smeared with lots of ssamjang, the easy-to-make spicy sesame sauce served with bulgogi and other grilled meats. The tahini chocolate chip cookies lead the way in introducing sesame to the sweet side of the pantry.