Suf, Ethiopian Sunflower Seed Sauce
Suf is the Amharic word for oilseed, and the sauce named for it belongs to Ethiopia's long fasting calendar, the many weeks each year when animal foods are set aside and cooks reach for seeds and legumes instead. Traditionally it is made from nug, the black niger seed pressed for oil across the Ethiopian highlands, ground and blended with garlic, chile, and lemon into a creamy sauce for injera or greens. Nug is hard to find outside East Africa, and sunflower seeds, its close relative, make a faithful stand-in with the same richness. The seeds carry all the fat the sauce needs, so it turns silky with nothing but water blended in. Toast them well, soak them soft, and let the lemon and chile do the work salt usually would.
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup Sunflower seeds
- 2 cloves Garlic
- 1 whole Indian green chile, stemmed
- 2 tbsp Lemon juice
- 1/4 tsp Cumin seed, ground
Method
- Toast the sunflower seeds in a dry pan over medium heat, stirring, until golden and fragrant, 3 to 4 minutes. Toasting is what deepens them from raw and grassy to nutty, and it is the flavor the whole sauce is built on, so take them to gold but pull them before they brown.
- Cover the warm seeds with hot water and let them soak 10 minutes. Softening them is the key to a smooth sauce; a soaked seed blends creamy where a dry one blends gritty.
- Drain the seeds and blend them with the garlic, green chile, cumin, lemon juice, and about 0.33 cup (80 ml) fresh water until completely smooth, scraping down and adding water a spoonful at a time until it turns silky and pourable. The seeds' own oil is what makes it creamy, so no oil is added or needed.
- Taste and adjust with more lemon for sharpness or more chile for heat. The acid does the seasoning here in place of salt, so lean on it until the sauce tastes lively rather than flat.
- Serve as a dip with whole grain flatbread, as a dressing thinned with a little more water over steamed greens or a lentil salad, or spooned onto an Ethiopian plate. It keeps three days in the fridge and thickens as it sits, so loosen it with water.
Nutrition
Estimated per serving: 90 calories, 3 g protein, 2 g fiber, 5 mg sodium. Computed from USDA FoodData Central reference values for the main ingredients. This is an approximation, not a laboratory measurement. How these are computed.
Cost per serving is estimated from US national-average retail prices for cheap staple forms, using BLS dried-bean prices and USDA produce prices. Prices vary by store and season, so treat it as a guide, not a receipt. How this is computed.
