A Bonnetful of Bees

I don’t know how many of you have ever tried tahini straight off the spoon. It’s sesame butter as in peanut butter, right, and sesame seed is wonderful on rolls and stuff……

Except in tahini, it’s not. Tahini grabs for every bit of saliva in your mouth and tastes really foul and sticks to your denture like well, there’s nothing I know to compare it with. I always wondered what it added to hummus and I have experimented with peanut oil and peanut butter with some success, especially among kids. Also. tahini separates out into oil and solids, and it’s hell to get out of the jar. Expensive, too.

The other day I was in Lim Chhour’s shop in Henderson – wonderful Asian supply shop and good for economical meat and veg, and I came across a bottle of toasted sesame seed oil. Note the “toasted“. A 750ml bottle was just under $13, and I hummed and hahed a bit before it went into the basket. Something new to play with. Did I deserve it?

Today, I made the first batch of hummus with it, using 60 ml of sesame oil instead of the 30-40ml of tahini I would normally use. It just looked a touch less substantial than tahini so I decided to boost it’s presence a little, as it were.

I have never made a batch of hummus that I have enjoyed as much, and yes, the Indian Chutney played a part, and the Gringo Killer Chilli Sauce, and for that matter, the Dutch Oven Bread. Toast the bread, spread it with (butter and) hummus, and then add chutney or sauce or whatever. Yum! Instead of the traditional hummus taste, where the tahini kind of gets lost, this was rich, rich, rich with the flavour of toasted sesame.

(Subsequent experiments substituted another tablespoon of olive oil for one of the tablespoons of sesame oil for a cheaper and no less attractive result – I suspect you could get away with one tablespoon of toasted sesame oil and the rest olive oil or peanut oil and the sesame flavour would persist.)
Here’s the recipe again in case you can’t locate it on the main website:

You will need:

• 2/3 cup Chana dal (dry)
• 3 cups Water
• 20ml Olive Oil
• 60 ml Lemon juice. (Lime juice, if you have a tree, makes a fine variation)
• 1 generous teaspoon Garlic paste or finely chopped garlic. (Remember this garlic will not be cooked and will therefore come through much more strongly in the finished product)
• 20 -60 ml Toasted Seasame Oil. (Use extra olive oil to make up the 60ml)
• 3/4 teaspoon Salt (or to taste)
• 1/2 teaspoon ground Coriander
• Some chopped olives or sundried tomatoes, or chopped parsley to taste. (Warning – if you add chopped olives, you may wish to reduce the initial quantity of salt.

Bring the water to the boil and simmer the chana dal for about 40-50 minutes, adding a little extra water if it looks like drying out. (Chana is a wild chickpea, and can be substituted for chickpeas in most recipes. The advantage of using chana is that it does not require soaking for 5 or 6 hours before you even think about cooking it.) Drain it. (You may wish to store the cooking water in ice cube form as a soup base for another occasion.)

Combine with all the other ingredients in a large bowl and use the stick blender until the texture is about right, though maybe a little too dry. At this point, add a little water, or some of that leftover bottle of sav blanc from the fridge, a little at a time, blending as you go, until it reaches the required consistency. Adjust for salt if necessary. Some people like to store it in the fridge for a bit to enhance flavour, but I use it straight from the factory as it were.

Editor’s Note: Finally, after years of celebrating the virtues of NZ Sauvignon Blanc as a cutlery cleaner, I have somebody in print just about agreeing with me.
From the Herald 31 May 09:
“In a column published this month, British wine critic Jane MacQuitty said she was horrified to discover a whole slew of “supposedly top-notch” sauvignons from Marlborough that she was judging at the recent Decanter World Wine Awards “were evil, watery, grassy wines”.”
She did say the best were still pretty good, but the clear message seems to be to save your supermarket sav blancs for later in the evening when everybody is pissed. Or for hummus.