I promised you a recipe for that honeyed tahini I mentioned on Sunday, and a reader held me to it. (Hi, Riv!) So here you go, friends. I aim to please.
This was a funny recipe to think about as a recipe at all, because usually I just wing it: a puddle of sesame paste, a squirt of honey, a shake of cinnamon. When I’m not in the mood for bowls and spoons and stirring (a more common occurrence than you might think), I simply apply all three directly to hot toast in the basic ratio of a lot of sesame paste to considerably less honey. (Got that? Are you writing this down?) Then, I drag a knife across the surface, and call it a meal. As a general rule, it works. But since that’s not exactly the most precise way to explain it; and because honey sometimes shoots out of the bottle in more copious amounts than I intend; and also because, despite my having slathered sesame paste on toast for nine years now, I still can’t properly evaluate the surface area of a slice and translate that to an appropriate amount of sesame paste on a spoon; and finally, because honeyed tahini really does taste better stirred into a uniformly smooth and creamy spread, the method leaves something to be desired.
I’m glad to have worked out a recipe for it now, and glad to share it with you.
Honeyed Tahini
Inspired by breakfast at Café Shosh (the old one, on Rechov Ha-Palmach) in Jerusalem
½ cup tahini (sesame paste)
1 tablespoon honey
A dash of cinnamon
Put all of the ingredients in a bowl, and stir.
p.s. –
:: This stop-motion film of an engine being stripped down and reassembled has its hooks (its pistons? its cylinders?) in me. Every time I watch it, I see something new. Check out the trickle of oil that flows into the jug at 0:45-6. Beautiful. (Thanks, Garry.)
:: This excerpt from The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard, as printed in the February 2012 issue of Harper’s Magazine. “And it’s as simple as this, what I want to tell you about: if perhaps not much, everything.”
:: The fried egg Wiki. (How is it that I am just discovering this?) Complete with “regional adaptations or peculiarities” of fried egg preparation and consumption in 15+ countries. It’s a treasure.