(with apologies to Fleischer Studios for ripping off even more material from Popeye)
I don't know when I stopped taking sesame seeds for granted, although it wasn't long ago. I do know that for years I never paid them much attention: They were either a flavorless adjunct to hamburger buns, more amusing to sing about in the McDonalds Big Mac jingle than to actually eat. They were a fixture in the free candies my mom's friend Mary, owner of the only health food store in town, would give me every time we came in to do a little shopping, little rectangles of sesame seed suspended in a hard sugar-and-honey-based candy. I would break them with my teeth, I would suck the sugar off, but all I would taste was honey and sugar, no sesame at all. Occasionally the seeds would cross the line from innocuous to offensive, like when I would buy a loaf of Italian bread flecked with unhulled sesame seeds that had gone rancid long before the dough had even been mixed, and those seeds would give the entire bread a weird, bitter, burnt taste.
I knew, from reading, that sesame was one of the oldest cultivated plants in the world; that the word "sesame" was one of the few words to arrive to our modern language from ancient Egyptian, nearly unchanged ("sesamt"
; that a theory existed that the reason "Open sesame!" was the magic key in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves was because the flowers of the sesame plant burst open, shooting out their wealth of seeds. I knew that sesame oil was a staple of Chinese and Japanese cuisine, among others, not only because the flavor of roasted sesame was prized by cooks, but also because the oil in the sesame seed is remarkably stable, longer-lasting and less prone to rancidity than that of other oils, and that sesame's comparatively low oil yield was more than compensated for by this stability.I knew that sesame had grown in Africa for millennia, and had been brought to the Americas by Africans captured by slave traders, and that to this day sesame is still known in parts of the South by its African name, benne, and that the lacy, sesame-based cookies known as benne wafers are adored by many. I had heard all of this, and I wondered what the fuss was all about -- or would have, if I had given sesame much of a second thought.
I think about all of this now, as I sit ten feet from a kitchen with a one-quart mason jar full of hulled sesame seeds, a 2-liter tin of Japanese sesame oil, a tiny jar of Chinese roasted sesame paste and an enormous jar of tahini, and once again I wince at my blinkered, parochial old self. Sesame is an object lesson in a tiny little seed: it is only as good to you as you are to it. Overroast it, burn it, test its patience and let it grow stale before you use it, and it will offer you only bitterness. But play with its texture a little bit, grind it coarsely, grind it smoothly, roast it with care and attention, and it will reward you with a taste both subtle and powerful, exotic and familiar. You can make it savory with garlic and chilies and peanuts or cashews; you can make it sweet with sugar, honey, maple syrup or molasses. Either way, it will play nicely. One of my favorite little food science moments comes in the making of the world's easiest salad dressing: take some tahini (measurements are sketchy here, but if you make this enough, you'll learn, quickly, when you have enough of everything), stir it a bit, squeeze in the juice of a lemon half or two, and stir. The tahini will tighten up, become stiff and difficult to stir. Then add a little water; not only will the tahini and lemon slacken, but the whole mix turns a creamy shade of white. The first time I tried this, I couldn't believe that something so easy could be so cool. I never get tired of watching it.
I love to make this dressing, as well as the spice paste for my favorite hummus, the recipe found in Sally Schneider's A New Way to Cook: you make a paste out of roasted ground cumin seeds, coriander seeds, sesame seeds, some minced garlic, a dash (or two) of cayenne pepper, salt, lemon juice and water. Once it's all mixed, toss your chickpeas into a food processor or blender (Ms. Schneider recommends that you soak and cook your own chickpeas, and while the taste is much finer if you do this, I have also used canned chickpeas for this, and all was well), pulse to break up the beans a bit, add the paste in tablespoons, pulse some more, then let the motor run continuously and drizzle some more water in until you have something with the consistency of fluffy mashed potatoes and the taste of the zippiest, happiest bean dip you have ever tasted. You can spread this on flatbread and drizzle some olive oil over it, or you can leave the olive oil off, and it will still be a joy to eat. It is particularly good as a dip for steamed vegetables; it has a real affinity for greens, and it will fill you up.
Another sesame dressing that I love is another gem from Sally Schneider: a dressing made of ground roasted sesame seeds, rice vinegar, a small hot chile (or you can use chile-infused vinegar), a little sesame oil, a little water and plenty of ginger. Ms. Schneider recommends it as a sauce for meat, or as a salad dressing, but I like to use it on soba noodles, when I am craving Chinese sesame noodles but need to scale back on my intake of peanut-butter-based sauces. While I am loath to create any more diet-based nonsense -- heaven knows, there's plenty of this out there -- I'm sure it's not just a coincidence that as soon as I stepped up my consumption of sesame, I lost a little weight. I was eating less, I was happier with what I was eating, and I had more energy to haul my sorry self to the gym. Even halvah made a difference. No, I certainly am not arguing that halvah is a diet food: I don't know what its calorie, fat gram or carb count is, and I really don't want to know. I do know this: it's intensely sweet and rich, it tastes like a million bucks, and it doesn't take much to make you go from satisfied and happy to sick and overstuffed. I have been known to binge on ice cream, chocolate, candy corn and even those hot Indonesian ginger chews that are sold at my corner market. I have never, ever, ever binged on halvah. It is too rich, sweet and dreamy to invite absentminded consumption.
By now you may be thinking that I'm making much ado about nothing. Years ago, I would have thought the same thing. But you don't have to be fixated and vaguely berserk like me to find what a nice enhancement sesame can be to your diet. There are three little things you can do to unlock the pleasures of sesame, and add a little zing to your food as well. You can try the science experiment I mentioned above, tahini, lemons, water and salt. You can add a little pepper, or garlic or ground cumin, but sometimes it's nice just to stick with the basic dressing, to remind yourself of just what a flavor powerhouse sesame is. You can roast some sesame seeds in a dry cast-iron or nonstick skillet: put the pan over gentle heat, add the seeds, stir constantly -- if you don't keep them moving, some of the seeds will burn before the others begin to toast. As you stir, watch the seeds get shiny as they gently exude their oils; they will clump together; keep stirring; eventually they will be at the perfect shade and the perfect fragrance for you, at which point you decant them immediately from the pan and shake them over your broccoli or your spinach or your salad or your poached chicken breast, or anything that you think could benefit from a little crunch and savor. And when you are done, you can make easiest dessert I know how to make, short of polishing an apple or peeling an orange: you can make sesame ice cream, which I found in Kevin Gould's brilliant book Loving and Cooking with Reckless Abandon (currently only available in the UK, but worth the price to get it shipped stateside). Kevin Gould got this recipe from his friend Machiko Jinto, who uses Japanese black sesame paste, and someday I will snag some of this black sesame paste for myself, but in the meantime, I make it with tahini. Once again, my pal sesame leaves me amazed: this ice cream is so easy to make, and it tastes so wonderful that it almost hurts.
Sesame ice cream
1 pint of the best vanilla ice cream you can get
2 tablespoons tahini or black sesame paste
Let ice cream rest at room temperature until soft but not melted. Spoon ice cream into mixer bowl. Add tahini and mix (with the paddle if you have a stand mixer, with your regular beaters if you have a handheld mixer, with a wooden spoon if you have elbow grease). When tahini is mixed in, pack ice cream back into container and return to freezer. When you are ready to serve it forth, serve it forth. Kevin Gould recommends that you "[t]hank Machiko for so simply delicious a dessert." I agree. Thank you, Machiko, for so simply delicious a dessert.