Amy Zitelman remembers the life-changing phone call she had with her sister, Shelby, almost a decade ago. Shelby was visiting her partner’s parents in Israel for Shabbat dinner and was captivated by the carrot cake his mother had baked for dessert. The secret ingredient? Tahini. Shelby asked Amy: “Could we sell tahini back home where hardly anyone had heard of it?” Recruiting their sister, Jackie, the trio decided to give it a shot, beginning Soom Foods in 2013 to produce a premium tahini from nutty Ethiopian Humera sesame seeds.

“I was in a farmer’s market or grocery store every day handing out samples,” Amy writes in her cookbook, “The Tahini Table.” She’d ask passersby if they were familiar with tahini, and about one in 20 people would say that they were. Now, that number has grown exponentially, as have Soom’s offerings, expanding to include flavored tahinis and date syrup (a perfect match for the sesame paste ,according to Amy).

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Photo: Courtesy of Amy Zitelman