Black sesame

Ground to a black paste, the bitterness needs sugar to read as flavour not fault.

Gomashio over plain grain: salt, roast and colour in one pinch.

Toasted and crushed with salt, the seed becomes a seasoning rather than a garnish.

Sweet orange starch under ashy black seed. The contrast is visual and real.

Two bitter, roasted, ground things. The seed oil carries the tea further.

Dairy fat rounds off the ash and the grey turns to lavender in the glass.

Sweet earth under bitter roast — the same bowl every Japanese sweet shop sells.

Cocoa butter is a blank; the seed supplies bitterness, colour and everything else.

Ester fruit over ash. The banana does the sugar and the seed does the depth.

Roasted seed paste supplies bitterness and colour the curd cannot make.

Two roasted things ground fine; the seed oil gives the tea a body it lacks.

Ground paste turns the set grey and gives it the fat it otherwise lacks.

Both grey-black and faintly bitter. The colour story writes itself.

Both are toasted, both are black, both taste of tannic oil. Deliberate.

Roast lands on the berry furanones and reads as burnt sugar, not seed.

Burnt seed bitterness is what makes this edible in any real quantity.

Peat and ash from two directions. Pour it over the ice cream and stand back.