Egg salad with sumac and zatar spices

April 11, 10:47 AMSacramento Nutrition ExaminerAnne Hart

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Sumac, a condiment and berry about the same color as bricks, is used instead of salt or mixed with thyme in many parts of the Middle East and southeast Europe. Sicilian sumac is sold in European groceries and found all over the Mediterranean. It has been eaten as a dried spice since Biblical times.  Add sumac to water and you have a drink that tastes like lemonade. Zatar, sumac and thyme with added salt, is sprinkled over food sold at open vendor stands found all over Jerusalem...and Beirut...and Istanbul..and in Sicily and Greece. Grow your own Sumac shrubs and plant next to thyme.

The sumac dried berry is not the poison sumac tree leaf, of course, but instead is a berry on a shrub that has grown wild in the Middle East since Neolithic times. It's sold as a reddish dried fruit that found in many Middle Eastern and Greek groceries in the form of a brick. 

Sumac is used like a spice, ground up, or the dried berry is eaten. It tastes tart, rather lemony, and is used to make food taste sour. In Biblical times, sumac decorated comfort food puddings or was smeared on flat bread and used to calm children’s upset stomachs.

Where do you buy sumac or zatar in Sacramento? Try some of these Middle Eastern grocery stores. Mediterranean Market is on Fulton St.  Shan Market is on Northgate Blvd. and Red Sea Food Market is on 65th St. Buy zatar and sumac online at Dean & Deluca's sumac at the Shopzilla site. Or buy  from My Spice Sage.

Did you ever visit the zatar vendor outdoor stands in Jerusalem? In the Middle East, especially in Greece, Sicily, the Balkans, the Levant, and the rest of the eastern Mediterranean area, it is served in small wooden dishes and passed around to each guest the same as you’d pass around a dish of pickles in central Europe. You can buy sumac in most Middle Eastern or Mediterranean-style grocery stores.

Decorate cooked fish or meat with sumac. Whip it into egg salad, or sprinkle it on rice instead of salt or other seasonings. See Penzey's Spices catalog. To make egg salad tart, take your usual egg salad or a dozen sliced hard boiled eggs mixed with two teaspoons of grape seed oil mayonnaise and add a tablespoon of diced onions with a teaspoon of dried sumac. According to Penzey's Spices catalog, the site suggests you season sliced onions with two teaspoons of sumac. But I like sumac sprinkled on cooked lentils and green beans and served over steamed brown rice, barley, or quinoa.

Sumac is frequently served on sliced raw vegetables such as tomatoes, onions, red bell pepper, or cucumbers topped with unsweetened Greek-style yogurt. Also you can serve this type of salad surrounded with sliced hard-boiled eggs and warm flat bread. The best type of flat bread to serve with egg salad or sliced vegetables topped with tahini or yogurt is flat or pocket bread you bake yourself using garbanzo bean flour, water, and sprouted lentils. 

Since a fifth of the population of America is estimated to be salt-sensitive, using crushed, dried sumac berries instead of salt works well. I mix turmeric and sumac, about a half teaspoon of both and cook it with my lentils or sprinkle it over any cooked beans. It works well in rice also mixed with saffron or turmeric. Yellow rice with sumac tastes just tart enough to complement other foods such as baked salmon. But sumac in egg salad gives it a slight tart taste, something like apple cider vinegar.

To make Biblical egg salad, you start with your usual egg salad. To serve about four people, take a dozen shelled, cooled hard boiled eggs and slice them thin. Mix with two tablespoons of grape seed mayonnaise, or if you don’t like mayonnaise, use two tablespoons or more as needed of tahini sauce, made from crushed sesame seed paste. You buy it in most health food and grocery stores or make your own by putting hulled sesame seeds in a blender with a little olive oil, lemon juice, and water.

If you want to make egg salad in the Biblical sense, that is in a fashion that is consumed today as well as was served up two to three thousand years ago in the ancient Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, add zatar to your egg salad. You make zatar using sumac. To begin, blend dried, crushed sumac berries with sesame seeds, thyme, and either sea/mineral salt or cumin and turmeric (if you’re salt-sensitive).

Sumac is the main ingredient in making the spice condiment called zatar, which is eaten today all over the Middle East. You can buy zatar already mixed as well as dried sumac in most Middle Eastern groceries or order it online. It's famous all over the Levant in well, Biblical proportions.

Mix your usual egg salad with zatar or sumac, putting about a teaspoon of zatar in the eggs, if you’re using a dozen hard boiled eggs. To make egg salad using less eggs, just add a pinch of zatar or sumac to your egg salad. Zatar is sumac and thyme combined. Sumac alone gives the eggs a tart flavor. Serve cooked or soaked and sprouted garbanzos (chick peas) as a side dish next to the egg salad. It's customary to serve each side dish in small wooden or porcelain salad bowls.

Serve the Biblical style egg salad on flat bread made with garbanzo (chick pea) flour topped with thinly sliced tomatoes or red bell peppers and sliced cucumbers. Top with tahini sauce or Greek-style nonfat yogurt and sprinkle with chopped cilantro or Italian parsley.

You now have a pan-Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, even Biblical egg salad with zatar and sumac. Both zatar and sumac are tasty, tart condiments for egg salads as well as for most salads, sandwiches, or baked fish. Serves four if you figure three eggs per person. If you buy sumac in a Greek grocer, it’s called Σουμ?κι, pronounced souMAKI. If you go to a Middle Eastern grocer, it’s pronounced SOO-mack and is the most popular spice all over the Levant today.