Cooking with Grains: Sesame, toast yourself!

I'm surprised that I'm only now writing this column about sesame. After all, thanks to my macrobiotic mother, I grew up with it and became addicted at an early age. She always had gomashio, a mixture of crushed roasted sesame and a little sea salt known from Japanese and Korean cuisine. But even without salt, sesame is a natural booster for bland food. It has a wonderfully nutty umami taste, with unpeeled black sesame adding a slight bitter note on top. (Oh, anyway! We should all eat more bitter!)

Sesame contains a lot of unsaturated fatty acids, minerals, vitamins such as E, B1, B2 and B6 and all essential amino acids. It has been cultivated for thousands of years, and today there are countless regional varieties - we mainly use white ones, that is the peeled brown one (a bit bland for me), the unpeeled brown one (buy it!) and the sophisticated black one (also buy it!).

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The easiest tip is to roast the sesame seeds until they smell fragrant and start to dance, crush them fresh and sprinkle them over vegetables, potatoes, whole grain rice, raw vegetables and Asian dishes. If you like something more sophisticated but don't have time to cook, you should try a hearty sesame soup. To do this, I take a good vegetable or chicken broth, mix in a few tablespoons of tahini (sesame paste), some roasted sesame oil, finely chopped spring onions and season everything with salt and ground pepper. If you like it stronger, add finely chopped chili or ginger. Coriander green for the eyes and off to the stomach with it.

You can also make a pudding from black sesame. To do this, I roast and finely crush a few tablespoons of sesame seeds. I heat coconut milk (cow or oat milk also work) and add two or three finely chopped, pitted dates to the liquid until they have dissolved (soak very dry dates in warm water beforehand). Then the sesame is added, either chia seeds or a little rice starch as a binding agent until the pudding is creamy. Decorate with fresh coconut flakes – or a little more sesame.

You can also make small energy balls for on the go. To do this, I take dried fruit, including dates cut into cubes, almond sticks and other nuts and seeds, roasted sesame, add a little sesame oil and roll everything in black or brown roasted sesame. The result? Pure energy! But the calories are not without either. Bon appetit!