Background

• Place of Origin: Tehina / Tahina / Tahini is a sesame seed-based condiment popular in the Mediterranean and Middle East
• Tahini is essentially sesame butter, toasted hulled sesame seeds ground into a paste.
• The simplest tehina sauce is just watered down tahini, but this one includes lot of lemon juice, infused with garlic and mixed with cumin and salt
• The method of letting the garlic sit in the lemon juice before straining it out, gives the sauce all of the wonderful flavor of the garlic without the harsh bite
• The tahini can also be made from scratch by toasting sesame seeds and grinding them into butter in a high-speed blender. If not, buy a good quality tahini from an ethnic store, preferably made from Ethiopian sesame.

Ingredients

• 2 cups tahini
• 1 head garlic
• ¾ cups lemon juice (3 lemons)
• 1 ½ tsps salt
• ½ tsp cumin

Instructions

1. Break up the garlic with peels still on into a blender with the lemon juice and ½ tsp salt
2. Blend into a coarse puree and let sit for 10 minutes and pour through a sieve into a (big) bowl with the tahini, cumin and 1 tsp salt
3. Whisk the tehina sauce, adding cold water until it forms a smooth creamy sauce
4. Add more cumin and salt as needed
5. The sauce will keep in the fridge for a week