Tahini sauce

25 Oct, 2024

From Michael Solomonov’s “Zahav” cookbook.

Ingredients

• 1 head garlic
• 3/4 cup from 3 lemons (I use 6 tbsp lemon juice)
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 generous cups Soom tahini
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin

Instructions

1. Break up the head of garlic, letting the unpeeled cloves fall into a blender. Add the lemon juice and 1/2 tsp of salt. Blend on high until you have a course puree. Let the mixture stand for 10 minutes to let the garlic mellow.
2. Pour the mixture through a fine-mesh strainer set over the bowl of a food processor, pressing on the solids to extract as much as liquid as possible. Discard the solids. Add the tahini to the strained lemon juice in the bowl, along with the cumin and 1 tsp of the salt.
3. Turn on the food processor until tahini sauce is smooth, adding ice water, a few tbsp at a time, to thin it out. The sauce will lighten in color. When the tahini seizes up, keep adding ice water, bit by bit (about 1.5 cups in total), until you have a perfectly smooth, creamy sauce.
4. Taste and add extra salt/cumin if you like. Tahini sauce will keep a week refrigerated, or frozen for up to a month.