A vivid green tahini sauce of the Levant: masses of flat-leaf parsley blended into sesame tahini with lemon and garlic until pale green, loosened with water, served as a dip or spooned over fish and falafel, the herb-and-sesame partnership at the heart of Levantine cooking
Origin: The Levant (Lebanon and Syria)
From the journey of Parsley.
Bakdounsiyeh, from baqdunis, the Arabic for parsley, is the green sibling of plain tahini sauce, a Levantine condiment in which a great quantity of flat-leaf parsley is blended into sesame tahini with lemon and garlic until the whole turns a soft pale green. Where tarator (plain tahini-lemon sauce) is the everyday partner to falafel and shawarma, bakdounsiyeh is its fresher, herbier cousin, the parsley lifting the rich, nutty sesame with its clean green bite. It is served as a dip with bread, spooned over fried or baked fish (it is a classic partner to the Levantine samak, and the base of sayadieh sauces), drizzled over falafel and roasted vegetables, or eaten simply with raw vegetables to scoop. It is a small, perfect illustration of the Levantine love of parsley, which the region treats not as a garnish but as a true ingredient.
The amount of parsley is the point; be generous, as it should turn the sauce a clear green and carry real herbal flavour. A whole-leaf, less-blended version (parsley chopped and stirred into the tahini sauce rather than puréed) is also made. It is the classic sauce for baked fish (the basis of the Lebanese tahini-fish sayadieh), but is wonderful with almost anything fried or grilled.
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