Tarator, the tahini sauce

Order fish on the Syrian coast and a small separate bowl comes with the plate: inside it is a pale sauce made from tahini and sharpened with lemon. It is called tarator. Four things are enough — tahini, lemon juice, garlic, salt — and the fifth is water.

What the water does

The whole trick of the recipe is water. Add lemon and water to tahini and the mixture first thickens and seizes like stone; an inexperienced kitchen thinks it has failed here and gives up. Keep stirring and the sauce opens out and turns to cream. The body depends on where you stop that turn.

Where the body goes

The sauce is set to suit the plate it is going to. Beside fish it goes out loose, pourable. For fried cauliflower and for falafel it is kept thick, because it has to stay on the mouthful. In the fridge it stiffens within hours, so it is loosened again with a spoon of water before serving.

Where you meet it

On the coast, in Tartus and Latakia, it sits in its own bowl beside grilled and fried fish; it is also the base of the sauce in samke harra, the spiced fish plate. Inland it comes with fried cauliflower, with falafel and with shawarma. The version with chopped parsley is called tarator bi bakdounis and shows up flecked with green.

Not the walnut tarator

In Turkish, tarator usually means a walnut sauce, and that is where the confusion starts. Syrian tarator is built on tahini, not walnuts. There is a northern version with walnuts added, and the two kitchens meet at exactly that point; but the sauce that arrives in a bowl on the coast has no walnuts in it.