'Tahini is the master sauce. It's nutty, creamy and super rich and, most importantly, it's really easy to use." Tomer Amedi, head chef at the award-winning Palomar in London's Soho, knows his tahini.
For him it's "a reason to eat bread or any form of carbs". In his restaurant it's served alongside the moreish kubaneh loaves baked by his wife, Yael. It has become one of those must-order items, and has helped give this staple of Israeli cuisine a new momentum of its own.
For chefs who grew up with the addictive sesame taste of tahini and halva, tahini's newfound cool is a chance to exploit its unique versatility.
Former Jago chef Louis Solley says when he worked at Ottolenghi, "it crept into so many dishes. Marinades for chicken, pairing with cauliflower, sultanas and spices... It's delicious swirled through a semi-freddo (iced dessert) with honey or made into fudge."
Josh Katz, another Ottolenghi alumni who now runs Hackney's Berber and Q, agrees. "I've yet to find a savoury ingredient that doesn't taste good with it. It enhances almost every type of meat, works well with fish and equally with all vegetables I've tried it with." Huge shoulders of lamb, smoky from his charcoal grills, are slathered with it: it adorns a much Instagrammed whole roasted cauliflower, it turns silky with meltingly soft aubergine.
Amedi says he's never found an ingredient he can't match with it either, from meat to cookies. "It's less a question of the ingredient itself, than the application. I would use a delicate kind for a raw fish or meat dish, a yoghurt tahini mix for a spicy deconstructed kebab, an intense one for a siniyeh (baked meatball dish) and so-on."
According to Katz, it also absorbs other flavours brilliantly. "I'm currently experimenting with putting all sorts of purées back into a basic tahini recipe to see what works well. My favourite at the moment is a caramelised onion tahini sauce."
And that's the beauty of tahini: mellowed with a little water and lemon, it becomes a sauce in moments and when sweetened with honey or date syrup, it turns into dessert.
Danielle Oron, the author of Modern Israeli Cooking, calls it the "Israeli peanut butter" that was the taste of her childhood. "Get one that's well made and you can spread it straight onto toast," she says, although her own recipes take it to new levels altogether. Her favourite? "A tahini mousse pie with halva and silan (date syrup) that I served at a restaurant in Atlanta. It's got a chocolate cookie crust that is then covered with halva, and topped with a fluffly, creamy, nutty, tahini mousse. I garnish it with a drizzle of silan and black sesame seeds. It's fantastic."
Of course in New York, you can buy handmade artisanal tahini, plus dizzying varieties of handmade halva at the new Seed + Mill in Chelsea Market - bang opposite the just opened Dizengoff's - a temple to hummus by acclaimed chef Michael Solomonov.
Back in London, chefs like Katz and Amedi say they get through far too much of the stuff to consider making their own, instead turning to top-quality brands like Al-Nakhil or Al-Arz, the kind that's properly emulsified, smooth and powerfully intense without being grainy or bitter.
Palestinian cook Joudie Kalla, whose book Palestine on a Plate is published in September, sources hers from Lebanon, and says she "literally would not know what to do without it".
She deploys it in a popular Palestinian dish called sayyadiyeh, mixed with lemon, yoghurt, parsley and tomato before being drizzled over cumin onion rice. And then there's her famous brownies, drizzled with tahini before being baked to intensify their flavour.
"I'm currently making a take on a cinnamon bun with tahini, date paste and chocolate, and it is incredibly naughty and delicious. I will most certainly be making these again."
Oron's salted tahini chocolate chip cookies, which featured in the New York Times, are another utterly addictive treat. "It will taste familiar enough, like peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, but a bit foreign. You will love it."
From a simple dip for fabulous bread, to a multi-layered dessert, it's all about celebrating the power of tahini. No wonder this sesame paste is having a moment - and long may it continue.
