Antalya-Style White Bean Piyaz with Tahini and Egg
White beans tossed in a loose tahini, lemon, and garlic sauce with tomatoes, thin onion, and a great deal of parsley, topped with quartered hard-cooked eggs and toasted sesame.
Why You'll Love This Recipe
Piyaz is a bean salad eaten all over Turkey, but Antalya makes its own version and it is the one worth knowing. The difference is the sauce. Instead of oil and vinegar, the beans get a thin tahini dressing, sharp with lemon and garlic, and the whole bowl turns pale and creamy without a spoonful of anything heavy. In Antalya it is served as a meal rather than a side, usually with köfte, and the plate arrives with eggs quartered around it and a mountain of parsley on top. The tahini is what makes people ask about it, since a bean salad is not supposed to taste like this.
It is a cold lunch that eats like a real one. Beans and tahini together make a thick, savory base, the eggs add their own richness, and then everything sharp in the bowl works against that: onion sliced thin enough to be almost transparent, lemon, vinegar, and enough black pepper to notice. The tomatoes matter more than they look, since their juice thins the sauce as it sits and keeps the whole thing from setting up into a paste. Toasted sesame is the last thing and gives the bowl a little crunch. Every element stays distinct, which is what keeps a cold bowl interesting down to the last forkful.
I make this in summer when turning the oven on feels like a mistake, and I make it in January with tinned beans and greenhouse tomatoes because it still tastes good. It takes about half an hour, most of that boiling and peeling eggs, and it holds in the refrigerator for days without losing anything. It travels well in a jar, it is better at room temperature than straight from the cold, and it is the sort of lunch you can build out of things already in the cupboard. It is also a good thing to have waiting in the refrigerator during a week that is going badly.
Ingredients
- Two 15 oz cans white beans such as cannellini or navy, drained and rinsed well
- 1/2 cup well-stirred tahini
- 3 large eggs, hard-cooked, peeled, and quartered lengthwise
- 1 3/4 cups cherry tomatoes, halved
- 1 small red onion, halved and sliced paper thin
- 3/4 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley, leaves and thin stems
- 2 tbsp sesame seeds, toasted in a dry pan
- 3 tbsp fresh lemon juice
- 1 tbsp white wine or cider vinegar
- 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 2 garlic cloves, grated to a paste
- 3/4 tsp ground cumin
- 3/4 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
- 1/8 tsp fine sea salt
Instructions
- Hard-cook the eggs: Lower the eggs into boiling water with a spoon and cook them for ten minutes at a bare simmer, then move them straight into cold water. Peel them under a thin stream of water, which lifts the shell away cleanly, and quarter them lengthwise just before serving so the yolks stay bright.
- Soak the onion: Slice the onion as thin as you can manage, put it in a bowl with the vinegar and a pinch of the salt, and leave it while you do everything else. Fifteen minutes takes the harsh edge off and turns the slices pink and softened, which is the difference between an onion you notice and one that runs the bowl.
- Make the tahini sauce: Whisk the tahini with the lemon juice and the grated garlic in a bowl. It will seize and go stiff and pale, which is exactly what should happen. Add cold water a tablespoon at a time, whisking after each, until it loosens into a smooth sauce about the thickness of heavy cream, then whisk in the cumin, the pepper, and the rest of the salt.
- Toast the sesame: Put the sesame seeds in a dry skillet over medium heat and shake the pan almost continuously for two to three minutes, until they turn golden and start to jump and smell nutty. Tip them onto a plate right away, since they go from toasted to burnt in the time it takes to turn your back.
- Dress the beans and build the bowl: Fold the beans, the tomatoes, the drained onion, and most of the parsley into the tahini sauce with a spatula, going gently so the beans stay whole. Spread it in a wide shallow bowl, arrange the egg quarters around the edge, pour the olive oil over in a thin thread, and finish with the sesame and the rest of the parsley.
Variations
- With tuna: Flake a drained tin of tuna into the beans before the sauce goes on, which turns the bowl into something closer to a composed salad.
- Herb heavy: Add a half cup of chopped dill and mint along with the parsley for a greener, cooler version that suits hot weather.
- Charred pepper: Fold in a roasted red pepper cut into strips, which brings smoke and sweetness against all that lemon.
- Warm piyaz: Warm the beans in a pan with a little of their liquid before dressing them, so the sauce goes loose and silky and the bowl eats like a winter lunch.
Storage & Leftovers
The dressed beans keep four days in a sealed container in the refrigerator. The tahini thickens as it sits and the beans soften into it, so stir in a tablespoon or two of cold water and a squeeze of lemon before serving to bring it back to the texture it had on the first day.
Store the eggs separately, either whole in their shells or peeled in a covered container, and cut them fresh. Cut egg dries out and picks up refrigerator smells within a day, and it is the one part of this bowl that does not improve with sitting.
This does not freeze. Tahini splits when it thaws and the beans go mealy, and there is no way back from either. It is quick enough to build fresh, and the beans and tahini keep in the cupboard indefinitely until you need them.
Notes & Tips
- Slice the onion paper thin: Thick slices stay aggressive no matter how long they soak. A sharp knife or the second setting on a mandoline gets you slivers that soften into the bowl.
- Rinse the beans properly: Canned beans carry a starchy, slightly metallic liquid that dulls the tahini. Rinse until the water runs clear and shake them dry in the colander.
- Use cold water in the sauce: Cold water brings tahini back together tight and glossy. Hot water loosens it faster but leaves the sauce looking oily and thin on the beans.
- Toast the sesame separately: Two minutes in a dry pan is all it takes, and it is the only crunch in the bowl. Skipping it costs more than it sounds like it would.
- Dress it just before eating: Beans go on drinking the sauce, so a bowl dressed an hour ahead will want loosening. Keep a little lemon and water back for exactly that.
Nutrition & Mindful Eating
- Beans, tahini, and egg between them turn what looks like a salad into a full lunch. The beans bring fiber and slow carbohydrate, the tahini adds fat and calcium, and the eggs put a complete protein on top of a bowl that is otherwise entirely plants.
- Tahini is ground sesame and very little else, which is why a half cup carries so much calcium and so much of the copper and magnesium that sesame is rich in. Loosened with lemon and water it spreads that through every bean rather than sitting in a pool at the bottom.
- Eggs are the one animal food here and they earn their place. The yolks carry choline, vitamin D, and the lutein that gives them their color, and hard-cooking them keeps all of it intact.
- White beans are the base of the bowl and their soluble fiber is what makes a plate of them sit so solidly. They also bring iron, and the lemon juice going over the top is what helps your body take more of it up.
- Sesame seeds toasted in a dry pan land last for crunch and smell, and gram for gram they carry more calcium than almost anything else in the cupboard.
- As you eat, notice how the sharp onion and lemon cut through the tahini on one forkful and not the next, and slow down enough to let a bowl this cool and simple actually register as lunch.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did my tahini sauce seize up?
Because that is what tahini does when the first liquid hits it. The emulsion breaks and it goes thick and grainy before it goes smooth. Keep whisking and keep adding cold water a spoonful at a time, and it will loosen into a pale, glossy sauce. Warm water makes it looser but slightly greasy, so cold is better.
What beans are traditional?
Antalya uses a small local white bean called candır, which is creamier and holds its shape well. Cannellini is the closest thing on most shelves, and navy beans work too. Dried beans cooked from scratch are noticeably better here, since there is nowhere for a bland bean to hide in a bowl this simple.
Can I leave the eggs out?
You can, though they are part of what makes this a lunch rather than a side dish. If you skip them, add another can of beans and a handful of toasted almonds so there is still something substantial in the bowl. Adding a can of tuna instead is not traditional and is very good.
It tastes flat. What is missing?
Almost always acid. Tahini absorbs a startling amount of lemon before it tastes like anything, so taste after the beans are folded in and add more lemon juice a spoonful at a time. Sumac is the other answer if you have it, sprinkled over the top the way it is done in Antalya.