Cooking Experiments: Playing with Tahini

Over the weekend I decided I wanted to try and make something similar to the spicy tahini sauce I've experienced at a couple restaurants I frequent. Browsing the internet I was rather disappointed to find more than a dozen variations to either the same rather bland garlic, lemon, tahini mix or hummus.

I decided to start with tahini and garlic and go from there, the plan was to mix it a rice and tofu dish I was preparing. I decided to toss in some chili powder for spice as it's one of the sweeter spices in my collection and I thought it would help offset the strong bitter flavour of the tahini. I gave the concotion a taste and found it to be quite flat.

I continued to add ingredents in the end having soy sauce, red wine vinegar and turmeric included in the mix. The end result was passable but far from what I was looking for.

Experiment two saw the same tahini, garlic, chili powder starting point added to some pre-prepared tomato sauce, served over pasta and chicken. Much closer to the desired effect but I still have work to do.

If I do end up coming with creation worthy of sharing I'll post it up here. Until then if anyone has a recommendation for a good tahini sauce please feel free to share.

Much thanks.