Halva: Greece’s Lenten Sweet, from its Ancient Roots to the Dubai Chocolate Version

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Halva: Greece’s Lenten Sweet, from its Ancient Roots to the Dubai Chocolate Version

 

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Whether plain, with chocolate swirls, or loaded with nuts and dried fruit, among other variations, Greek halva is a scrumptious sweet treat and the big edible star during Greek Lent ahead of Orthodox Easter. The age-old delicacy in its sesame version is not only loaded with the nutrients contained in tahini (sesame paste), its main ingredient.

This traditional sweet has moved with the times, with new and creative varieties popping up, vowing to impress even the most demanding foodies. This year, some Greek halva manufacturers have even embraced the viral Dubai Chocolate trend, creating another fusion sweet treat that makes sesame halva irresistible for every Greek lenten table.

Sesame halva may be made with simple ingredients, such as tahini (sesame seeds grounded into a paste after their skin is peeled off), sugar syrup, and a small quantity of soapwort root powder (τσουένι or tsoueni in Greek), which is widely used in Greece for the making of halvas. But it’s the unique and traditional kneading process that gives this treat its smooth and stringy texture.

For its most basic version, the sugar syrup is slowly roasted in specially made copper caldrons until it becomes caramelized and is then mixed with the sesame paste and the soapwort. The mixture must have a temperature of about 60 to 70 degrees Celsius and is transferred to special basins where it is slowly and painstakingly traditionally kneaded to become stringy and crumbly and feel like it’s melting inside the mouth when tasted. Vanilla flavor, cocoa, almonds, and pistachios can be added for an extra mouth-watering experience.

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And this is where its more present-day additions pop up. As many modern Greeks have been looking for healthier alternatives, halva manufacturers use whole sesame seeds, which retain many more nutrients, carob syrup, honey, brown sugar, or stevia, a natural sugar substitute derived from a plant. Moreover, they create more complex halva flavors for more demanding customers, including hazelnuts, dried cranberries, orange, and cookies, either alone or in combinations, often topped with dark chocolate. Halva is usually sold in blocks and by the kilo, with its price depending on the complexity of the ingredients.

This year, some manufacturers, responding to the global trend of the Dubai Chocolate that has been sweeping Greece as well, created a Dubai version of sesame halva. Dubai Chocolate is enveloped in milk chocolate in its original recipe. But because Greeks are not allowed to eat animal-derived ingredients during Lent, one of the Dubai Chocolate halva versions is sandwiched between two layers of dark chocolate. The halva mixture in the middle is pistachio-flavored and loaded with minuscule, crunchy shreds of roasted kataifi. In other versions, the shredded kataifi is added atop the halva and then covered in dark chocolate.

Halva in Greece is also made with semolina instead of sesame paste. Another famous version is the traditional

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(also known as “soapy halvas”), a type of jelly-like halva sweet made with corn starch and lots of milk butter and thus, cannot be eaten during Lent.

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The age-old origins of halva, Greece’s beloved sweet during Lent

Derived from the Arabic word halwa, which means sweet confection, halva’s origins are widely debated, as many Middle Eastern countries have claimed the treat as their own. Some scholars have suggested it originated near Byzantium some time before the 12th century, while some food historians say it was found around 3,000 BC. Evidence exists that it originally was a somewhat gelatinous, grain-based dessert made with flour, oil, and sugar.

Some say it appeared in 7th century Arabia, referring to a mixture of mashed dates and milk, while others claim it originated in

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The first known, written halva recipe appeared in the early 13th century in the Arabic cookbook Kitab-al Tabikh, The Book of Dishes, and included seven variations. Halva was adopted by the Ottoman Turks, including the sesame-based version, and soon spread throughout their empire and ultimately across the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and Central Asia. In each place, the ingredients and name are slightly changed. It was called halawa and mixed with pistachios, almonds, or pine nuts in Egypt. Indians, on the other hand, shortened the name to halva and flavored it with local products such as ghee and coconut.

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One of the sweet’s most prominent enthusiasts was

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the Ottoman Empire’s longest-reigning sultan. He had a special kitchen built next to his palace, the helvahane (house of halva), where some 30 varieties were produced. It was made with sesame tahini, adopted by Ottoman-ruled Romanians who passed it on to Ashkenazi Jews in Europe and finally reached America in the early 20th century. It is this version that has been widely adopted in Greece.

To this day, Turkey remains one of the world’s leading helva (as it’s called in Turkey) manufacturers with countless variations, including the famous floss halva, which is fine strands of flour roasted in butter into pulled sugar, known as pismaniye. It comes in different flavors, including chocolate, pistachio, and pomegranate.

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One of Greece’s oldest halva workshops preserving a century-old tradition

Most of the owners of Greece’s oldest, handmade halva workshops originated from Constantinople or Asia Minor, where the sesame confection was perfected over the centuries and became an indispensable part of daily life.

One of them is in Drapetsona, near the port of Piraeus, founded in 1924 by Kostas Mezardasoglou, a man from Asia Minor from where he moved to Greece after the Catastrophe. At a shop on the Turkish coast across from Greece, he had learned the art of handmade halva, which he brought with him in Drapetsona.

Over the years, he passed on the art to his son, George, who eventually took over the workshop after his father could not continue due to his old age. In 1984, George collaborated with Evmorfios Kosmidis, who, after he retired in 1986, passed on the workshop to Nikos Gavrilis, also of Asia Minor origin. He and his associates have maintained the only remaining traditional halvas workshop of the many that once existed in Piraeus since 2002.

“We conserve the tradition that our ancestors brought,” Gavrilis tells Greek Reporter from his workshop. “They brought the art and the civilization with them from Asia Minor.”

Every year, ahead of Clean Monday, the beginning of Lent in Greece, huge lines of Greeks begin to appear outside Gavrilis’ halvas workshop, probably the most famous across the country. These are by far the busiest days for Gavrilis for one simple reason:

“In Asia Minor they were eating halva all the time, in Greece it is only consumed for a few days throughout the year. It is a seasonal sweet, and that is not good,” he says.

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