There is a jar in the Japanese pantry that looks exactly like tahini and behaves nothing like it. The seeds are roasted darker and ground finer, and the result is sweeter, rounder, without tahini's faint bitter edge. Give it three minutes and a bunch of spinach and you have the side dish that appears on Japanese tables more often than almost anything else.
Goma-ae means, simply, dressed in sesame. No pan, no sauce to reduce, nothing to time. You boil the greens, you squeeze them properly, and you fold them through a paste that is already finished the day it is ground.
Serves 2–3 as a side · about 10 minutes
Ingredients
- 1 bunch spinach (about 200g)
- 2 Tbsp white sesame paste (nerigoma)
- 1 Tbsp soy sauce
- 2 tsp sugar
- 1 tsp shiro-dashi
- To finish: toasted sesame seeds
How to make it
- Boil the spinach briefly, lift it into cold water, then squeeze it hard — harder than feels polite. Water left in the leaves is the one thing that ruins this dish; the dressing slides off instead of clinging. Cut into 3–4cm lengths.
- Put the sesame paste in a bowl and add the soy sauce a little at a time, stirring after each addition. This is the part worth knowing: nerigoma is stiff straight from the jar, and if you tip everything in at once it stays lumpy. Loosened gradually, it turns glossy and smooth in about twenty seconds.
- Stir in the sugar and the shiro-dashi.
- Fold the spinach through the dressing until every strand is coated. Finish with toasted sesame seeds, crushed between your fingertips as you scatter them — they release their aroma the moment they break.
Tip
No shiro-dashi in the cupboard? A pinch of kombu dashi powder stirred into a teaspoon of water does the same work, and keeps the dish entirely plant-based. Green beans, broccoli, or carrots cut into batons all take the same dressing — blanch, squeeze or drain well, and fold. Black sesame paste makes a darker, bolder version that looks striking against green beans. The dressing keeps two or three days in the fridge, so it is worth mixing a double batch while the jar is open.
