RECIPE :: halva

This is a basic recipe for halva that was given to me by my friend Eleftheria, think of it as a blank canvas for some culinary creativity. I’ve suggested a few improvements to the recipe below but please experiment with your own favourite ingredients.

Ingredients
200ml of olive oil,
400g / 16oz of semolina,
900ml of water,
2-3 tbsp of golden syrup (or for extra extravagance use maple syrup),
360g / 15oz of sugar,
3-4 cinnamon sticks,
8-10 cloves (optional) and
some icing sugar for decoration

Method
1) Put the olive oil in a big saucepan and warm up over a medium heat.
2) Put the semolina in with the oil and stir continually until all the oil has been absorbed and the mixture has started to turn a light brown.
3) At the same time put the water, 1tbsp of the golden syrup, sugar, cinnamon sticks and cloves into another saucepan and bring to the boil.  Lower the heat to a simmer.  Remove the frothy stuff floating on the mixture and remove the cloves and the cinnamon sticks.
4) Once the semolina has gone that lovely brown colour and the liquid mixture has had all the necessary stuff removed from it, pour the liquid over the semolina and turn down the heat to the lowest possible setting.  Keep stirring this mixture until all the liquid has been absorbed.
5) Let the mixture rest for 20 minutes.
6) Empty the mixture onto a plate and mould it into the desired shape.
7) Now for my favourite bit, pour the rest of the golden syrup over the halva and liberally sprinkle icing sugar over the syrup and throw it under a warm pre-warmed grill for a few minutes.
8) Serve warm or cold with some wonderful cream or ice-cream.

Experimental point

When I first made this I used far too many ingredients and ended up with both my saucepans filled with their separate mixture and no saucepan big enough to combine the mix. So I ended up with three saucepans and being a poor judge of quantity I ended up with one saucepan having more liquid than in the other one. This produced a slightly different halva so have some fun with playing with the water quantities (+50ml) and see whether you prefer a drier halva or a moister one.

Variations

This is where you get to have some creative fun. Try anything that you can think of and see what happens

Chocolate and lime halva

I love chocolate and lime sweets and thought that the mix should go well together in a halva.

Ingredients
1 lime,
4tbsp cocoa powder and
250g / 9oz of melted dark chocolate.

Method
1) At stage 3 of the above recipe put in the juice and zest of the lime with the rest of the liquid.
2) Half way though stage 4, mix the cocoa powder, 200 grams of the chocolate chips and the grated lime rind into the mixture and stir well.
3) Instead of stage 7, pour the chocolate over the halva.