Za'atar - Thyme, Sesame and Sumac Blend

Za'atar is two things wearing one name, which is where most of the confusion starts. It is a plant - a wild thyme-oregano of the eastern Mediterranean and Sinai, scented somewhere between thyme, oregano and marjoram - and it is also the mixture built around that plant. This pouch is the mixture: dried za'atar herb, toasted sesame seeds, ground sumac and a little salt.

Every part is doing a job. The herb is the backbone, dry and savoury. The sesame is toasted before it goes in, which turns it from a seed into something nutty and rounded, and it is what gives the mixture body on a piece of bread. The sumac is the sharpness - a dark red, sour, almost fruity acidity doing the work a squeeze of lemon would do, without the liquid. The salt is small and there to pull the other three together.

Proportion is the whole argument in za'atar, and every family has an opinion. Ours leans herbal rather than sesame-heavy: enough sesame to be nutty and to give texture, not so much that the bag is mostly seed. It is standardised by weight for each batch, so the pouch you buy in March tastes like the one you buy in November. Herb, sesame, sumac and salt - no rusk, no breadcrumb, no starch, no colouring.

The classic way to eat it needs nothing else: a shallow dish of good olive oil, a saucer of za'atar, bread torn and dipped first in the oil and then in the powder. Breakfast across Egypt and the Levant is built on that. The other classic is baked - za'atar slaked with olive oil into a loose paste, spread over flatbread dough and baked until the edges blister.

This blend contains SESAME, and not as a trace: it is one of the main components by weight. Sesame is a declarable allergen in the EU and the UK. If you are cooking for anyone with a sesame allergy, this is not the jar to reach for, and there is no version of za'atar without it. The allergen statement is printed on the pack alongside the net weight and batch number.

The name and the habit are old, and the territory is bigger than any one country: Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan all keep a version, and Sinai grows the wild herb. In Egypt you meet it at breakfast and in bakeries far more than in the cooking pot. It has a long history of traditional use across the region, and that is offered here as a description of the custom rather than as a health claim, and it is not medical advice.

Two things worth knowing before you cook with it. The sesame is already toasted, so za'atar does not want a hot dry pan - the seeds go from nutty to burnt in seconds and burnt sesame covers everything else on the plate. And sumac's acidity fades under long heat, so a blend stirred into a slow braise at the start arrives flatter than one scattered on at the end. Think of it as a finishing mixture.

It is one of the easiest things on this shelf to carry home: dry, light and unbreakable. Scatter it over labneh or thick yoghurt, over tomatoes and cucumber with olive oil, over potatoes and cauliflower going into the oven, or into the crust of a roast chicken. If you ate breakfast on a hotel terrace here and could not place what was on the bread, this was it.