Tahini-Roasted Broccoli

There are certain foods that I almost never cook, not because I don’t like them but because I can’t be bothered to deal with them.

These include:

Artichokes — happy to steam them whole and pluck off the leaves, but trimming them is too much trouble,

Fava beans — a skimpy yield and a pain to peel (although maybe there’s no need), and

Just about anything deep fried — becasue I don’t want to deal with all that oil.

I also have a decidedly love-hate relationship with tahini. It’s yummy stuff, good in sweet and savory recipes alike, but it’s also kind of a pain, what with all the separating and stirring.

This roasted broccoli makes great use of tahini, but it’s a recipe I kept putting off, primarily for the somewhat embarrassing reason that I didn’t feel like arm wrestling with my jar of sesame paste.

I like tahini, but I don’t like working with it. I’ve never really figured out a good way to emulsify everything, without bending one of my spoons in the process.

If anyone has any tips, I’ll gladly take them. I read somewhere that an immersion blender helps, but mine won’t fit in my tahini jar and scraping out the entire contents of the jar so that I could blend it together for the sake of two measly two tablespoons seemed like a lot of unnecessary effort.

In the end, I stirred the tahini as best I could but still had a few goopy lumps here and there. Smoother tahini would have been nice, but the broccoli was a win either way: nutty and lemony with crisp, almost caramelized, edges.

The entire recipe is ready in minutes (minus the time spent stirring tahini) and the leftovers were almost as good the next day.

It was enough to make me want to dip back into that tahini jar for another batch — and that’s saying something.