Secrets of a Vegan Kitchen 4 open sesame!

The tiny sesame seed can play a big part of your daily diet.  Tahini is made of crushed sesame seeds, nothing added, pure and simple.  These days there are a number of brands which are organic, and these are the only ones you should consider buying.

So what do you do with it?  Spread it on bread - give fatty butter the flick.  Mix it with honey and spread on wholemeal bread. If you haven't eaten tahini before, you should be aware that when you first try it, it will have  a stringent effect on your mouth, and taste quite dry. You shouldn't let this put you off, as your taste buds seem to quickly adjust to this, and in a day or two you will only have the pleasant nutty flavour, which millions of people around the world enjoy.

Tahini is an essential ingredient of hommous, so you already have eaten some.  Good hommous should include .....well that's a topic for another post.

Then there are more devious ways to use it, which I invented to use in my vegan cafe. The remarkable thing about tahini, is its oily property, the oil being a natural ingredient, produced when the seed is crushed.  This sesame oil readily mixes with water.  Try a dab on your finger, then rinse it off under a tap.  To my knowledge, no other oil has this property.  

I set out to make a mint source - a vegan one.  The first thing I learnt was that if you mixed tahini with lemon juice, it forms a very thick blob.  This is when I discovered the strange ability of tahini to be able to mix with water.  So in my trusty Braun vitamiser, I poured  some tahini, some water, mixed it up, then added lemon juice. Perfect!  Smooth full bodied slightly tart source.  I added some mint, and it became not just a plain mint source, but a high quality vegan mint source.  My customers thought I had dropped my vegan credentials, but I told them no - it was a secret.

This source has far reaching applications.  I like it poured over steamed vegetables, added to fresh salads. used over lentil patties, even used in soup.  I'm sure you can think of other uses.  It doesn't have to be mint of course, you can use basil, or fresh coriander,  garlic, or whatever.  It's a stable source, but best used within a few days.

You don't have to be a vegan to enjoy these recipes, but they just expand your  repertoire, and give you new possibilities, to be creative.

There's lots more tips and tricks, secrets even, stay tuned.