Tahini is a paste of sesame seeds mostly used for humus and is amazingly healthy: it contains a lot of calcium, protein and fibre. One tea spoon of sesame seeds has more calcium than 10 liters of milk! This makes the tahini paste an important ingredient for the vegetarian and vegan kitchen.
You can use tahini for any type of warm or cold dish, like the base of a sauce for stir-fried eggplant, a vegetal curry, pasta sauce or as a dip for raw veggies, in smoothies and with yoghurt. You can use it for baking, like apple pie, with cup cakes, brownies and banana bread. Most popular these days is the tahini dressing, from which I made two variants.
The first one is light of color and is served with different types of lettuce, cucumber, tomato, walnuts and fresh coriander. To make this dressing you first add some tahini with agave in a cup, then add lime juice and apple cider vinegar. Stir carefully and you will feel that the sauce becomes thicker bit by bit. Then add some salt, pepper en chili powder. In the end start to pour some drops of olive oil into the dressing, keep on stirring. This way the dressing keeps this nice thick structure. The taste is amazing and would also be great as a dip for nachos, cucumbers, radishes and carrots!
The second one below is prepared the same way (with the oil at last), but made of tahini, honey, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper and extra verge olive oil. The color is darker and the taste a little bit more Italian. Served with baby spinach, cucumber, avocado, white cheese, tomato and some extra sesame seeds. Bon apetite!
YOGA LIFESTYLE 