Simple, special... Delicious!
Halva is a sweet that is commonly eaten all over the Middle East, Greece, Eastern Europe, North Africa and certain parts of Asia.
The composition of halva in its original form - is a thick dense mass of milled nuts or sesame seeds and honey. Sometimes the eggs were added to create the foam and the "lightness" of the final product.
However, in ancient times the Arabs learned to replace the honey with sugar. And although halva lost some of its original flavor after such substitution , this recipe turned to be little easier and much cheaper than the honey one. That is why it entrenched and became the most common worldwide.
These days there are hundreds of types of halva, a lot of recipes and methods of cooking, but the traditional manual production of halva survived only in Iran, and this is the best paste in the world.
The main components of which are made halva, are quite simple:
• Caramel mass (sugar, treacle or honey)
• The protein mass (seeds or nuts)
• Foaming agent (licorice root, soap root or egg yolk)
Sugar syrup is generally used as caramel mass in industrial production, and honey is used only in home recipes. Foaming agent is added to the candy mass to give halva its layered fibrous structure. Besides the basic componenets sometimes other components are added. They can be flavorings and food colorings.
Considering the simple set of ingredients, making halva should look unpretentious, but it is not all that easy. Connecting the ingredients is not only the art, but often a technologists' secret, affecting halva's taste and texture.
It is far from being the same to stir in the protein mass into the caramel or vice versa - to add the caramel into the protein. Thorough mixing the masses and then non-stop continuous stretching them in hot state, before the paste hardens, is also most important operation in the production of halva.
After cooling, the paste, on the condition it has been made without breaking technology, is a light, airy delicacy - because the finest sugar crystals, rubbed in protein mass, crunch and quickly melt in the mouth, whereas in not properly whipped halva sugar hardens into pieces.
This is the first sign that the amount of nuts or seeds added is less than the amount of sugar, whereas in good halva it should be opposite. The protein component is the basis of halva and breaking of the proportions leads to a distortion of the true taste.
Today halva can be bought in health food shops, some supermarkets or ethnic food stores in several varieties - plain or sugar, sunflower, pistachio, peanuts and almond - rather wide choice to satisfy tastes that differ.
Still unknown in some places it ofen turnes into a new special thing in the menu.
The composition of halva in its original form - is a thick dense mass of milled nuts or sesame seeds and honey. Sometimes the eggs were added to create the foam and the "lightness" of the final product.
However, in ancient times the Arabs learned to replace the honey with sugar. And although halva lost some of its original flavor after such substitution , this recipe turned to be little easier and much cheaper than the honey one. That is why it entrenched and became the most common worldwide.
These days there are hundreds of types of halva, a lot of recipes and methods of cooking, but the traditional manual production of halva survived only in Iran, and this is the best paste in the world.
The main components of which are made halva, are quite simple:
• Caramel mass (sugar, treacle or honey)
• The protein mass (seeds or nuts)
• Foaming agent (licorice root, soap root or egg yolk)
Sugar syrup is generally used as caramel mass in industrial production, and honey is used only in home recipes. Foaming agent is added to the candy mass to give halva its layered fibrous structure. Besides the basic componenets sometimes other components are added. They can be flavorings and food colorings.
Considering the simple set of ingredients, making halva should look unpretentious, but it is not all that easy. Connecting the ingredients is not only the art, but often a technologists' secret, affecting halva's taste and texture.
It is far from being the same to stir in the protein mass into the caramel or vice versa - to add the caramel into the protein. Thorough mixing the masses and then non-stop continuous stretching them in hot state, before the paste hardens, is also most important operation in the production of halva.
After cooling, the paste, on the condition it has been made without breaking technology, is a light, airy delicacy - because the finest sugar crystals, rubbed in protein mass, crunch and quickly melt in the mouth, whereas in not properly whipped halva sugar hardens into pieces.
This is the first sign that the amount of nuts or seeds added is less than the amount of sugar, whereas in good halva it should be opposite. The protein component is the basis of halva and breaking of the proportions leads to a distortion of the true taste.
Today halva can be bought in health food shops, some supermarkets or ethnic food stores in several varieties - plain or sugar, sunflower, pistachio, peanuts and almond - rather wide choice to satisfy tastes that differ.
Still unknown in some places it ofen turnes into a new special thing in the menu.