Roasted Carrots with Dukkah and Lemon Tahini Dizzle, Vegan, Gluten Free
Crisp winter carrots are roasted until they gain a slight char and their natural sweetness blooms. Drizzled with lemon garlic tahini sauce and dusted with earthy nutty Dukkah they make a tantalizing side dish.
The tiny man in the flowing white gallabia crouched by our door. He stood and half bowed to us as we passed through the sweltering Cairo hallway. With skin luminous as smoked herring and eyes dark as olives, he gestured to the floor. We saw a simple lunch spread across the tiles, a handful of olives, a tin of fava beans, a container of a mysterious melange. Eggplant? Veggies? Chicken?
Small cheer and great welcome makes a merry feast!
-William Shakespeare
He gestured again. A couple of weary hotel workers arrived from down the hall and sat around the food adding their own lunch containers to the growing feast. A brown paper bag was ripped to reveal fresh pita bread. a small packet formed from newspaper spilled Dukkah, the aromatic mix of crushed seeds and nuts that takes the place of salt and pepper in Egypt.
Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels unaware.
-Scripture
We knelt in our sticky sweaty jeans, awkwardly aware that these men were sharing with us the food they needed to fuel their day’s work. We were western tourists with nothing to do all day but sightsee and buy souvenirs.
No utensils were provided and we scooped the food with torn pieces of bread. Our awkwardness evaporated in that breezeless hallway as the tired men coaxed us to taste this and that, teased us for our awkwardness and regaled us with funny stories from their life. All this you understand unfolded without words but in the common language of gestures and laughter, grins and exaggerated facial expressions.
Buy your Dukkah at any Middle Eastern market or better yet make your own.
Check out my new Aquafaba page! For tips, tricks and to see all of my Aquafabulous recipes.
Roasted Carrots with Dukkah and Tahini, Vegan, Gluten Free
Roasted earthy winter carrots drizzled with lemony Tahini sauce and sprinkled with aromatic Dukkah, an Egyptian spice blend of seeds and spices.
- 1/4 cup Dukkah bought or make mine, link above the recipe.
- 1 pound carrots
- 1 tbsp olive oil
Tahini Sauce
- 5 tbsp tahini paste, middle eastern sesame paste
- 4 tbsp fresh lemon juice
- 1-2 cloves garlic
- 1 pinch salt
- enough warm water to thin to the consistency of pourable caramel
-
Heat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
Wash and dry your carrots.
Rub them with Olive oil.
-
Place them in a large pan and place in your hot oven. Bake until fork tender., somewhere between 25 to 35 minutes.
-
While they are baking make the tahini sauce by combining the first four ingredients, sesame paste through salt. Stir in enough warm water to thin the tahini to a just pourable consistency.
-
Remove the carrots form the oven, place on a platter, drizzle with tahini and generously dust with dukkah.
Those are the precious, rare encounters that travelling is all about.