Tahini – Food for the Gods

Breakfast outdoors tastes better

Would you believe in the miraculous powers of a tiny seed from a humble bush, if I revealed that a small Greek kingdom transformed into a mega empire by grinding this seed into paste and consuming to raise the most well known army of its era that conquered the entire known world. It is only befitting that this tiny seed nourished Homer’s epic for a decade.

Those of you versed in Greek history might have guessed by now the name of this super-food seed; which is none other than Sesame seed (SESAMUM indicum). And the paste is Tahini.

                                     

Borrowing from the ancient Greek wisdom I decided to include 1 to 2 spoons of tahini mixed with pure honey in my breakfast. By eating it daily in the morning I hoped it would enhance my blog writing skills (which only time can tell), but for now the result is an amazingly delicious healthy food in my diet; especially when I put it on a slice of freshly baked home-made bread with whole nuts and zea flour.

Traditional bronze bowls are still used for the production

This summer a very dear friend from abroad spent few days at my home. The first day after his arrival I offered him a typical Greek breakfast full of delicious & healthy locally grown products.

I must mention that Greece is a paradise for fruits, vegetables, nuts, honey, olive oil, and real yogurt due to constant shinny days and ground consistency. And believe me they taste nothing like what you might have already tasted elsewhere. They can wake up your deepest memories of childhood, when you were just a carefree child, who was exhausted from nonstop playing, running to your mom’s kitchen for your snack.

So I woke up early that morning and baked bread (whole nut and Zea flour) with lots of sunflower seeds and linseeds. I sliced apples and figs freshly picked up from my mother’s garden, got pure goat yogurt (the one with the crust on top), a combination of cereals (linseed, buckwheat, oats & zea),raw nuts, home-made jam with fruits from my parent’s garden (thanks mom!) honey and of course tahini.

While we were having our breakfast under the warm sun (Greece is well known for sun’s bright light effect) I noticed that my friend’s eyes, on seeing tahini, opened wide full of query! It was only then I realized that many people worldwide, not only haven’t tasted tahini, but they also haven’t heard about it. Maybe that’s why we don’t have big empires and Epics like the one Homer wrote once!

So I imagined I was Eleni of Troy and I started explaining to my friend what exactly tahini is, how it is made, how nutritious it is and how can we use it in our daily diet.

I explained to him that tahini, is actually the paste produced by milling baked wholegrain sesame seeds.

Sometimes you can find tahini in which it is added cocoa powder, which gives a very special taste and it suits a lot.

Adding tahini in your daily diet is so healthy that you can notice very soon the health benefits and the improvement in the appearance of your skin and hair. Of course you have to be very careful with the amount you consume, since one soup spoon of tahini has almost 90kcal.

For vegetarians like me, tahini is a perfect source of vegetable proteins, with high biological value, when you combine it with food rich in lysine, like nuts or pulses , (like chickpeas, for hummus or with beans) since it provides you with proteins with biological value equivalent to meat proteins. Tahini is also rich in vitamins E, B1, B2, niacin, amino acids and carbohydrates. It prevents hair loss, headaches and increases milk production for lactating women. It also acts as antihypertensive, anti thrombotic, anticancer and antioxidant and helps against osteoporosis.

Due to all these it is regarded as a super food. Ancient Greeks used to add tahini in their daily meals. It is also used in Arabian and Turkish cuisine.

We find mention of the seeds in ancient Chinese medicine while Assyrian Gods were believed to drink wine made from sesame seed before a battle, and mortals considered it precious as silver.

While I was talking to my friend about tahini, I noticed that the whole bowl of tahini and almost all of the bread had disappeared and in a way he did look fuller and shinier. I was so happy he was enjoying its divine taste while listening to my stories that I continued giving him advises how to use it as a dressing in his salads (just by mixing tahini with lemon juice) or as a dip for his finger food with raw vegetables, like carrots and cucumber (just by mixing tahini, lemon juice, salt and pepper in a bowl).So simple, so easy yet if you consider how rich tahini is in calcium, zinc, potassium, copper, iron and Ω6 fats… you get amazed! Just by eating one spoon of tahini daily you stand to improve your health tremendously. And who knows, this may lead you to your Eleni of Troy!

That morning, after eating the whole bowl of tahini (along with all the other food we had) it is needless to mention that we went for hiking into the Rodopi Mountains. We wandered over 8 hours through the beautiful forests. Too many calories had to be burned!