Halaweh

Halaweh, halva, halawa, depending on the transliteration, is a dense sesame confection made from tahini and sugar syrup, set into a firm block with a texture somewhere between fudge and compressed sand. It is eaten across an enormous area, from the Balkans through Turkey and the Levant to Egypt and out to India, and the sesame-based version is the one that dominates the eastern Mediterranean and North Africa. Raisins, pistachios and almonds are common inclusions. What is distinctively Egyptian is how it is eaten. Despite being extremely sweet and very rich, Egyptians commonly make halaweh sandwiches, the block sliced or spread into bread and eaten for breakfast or dinner. Mothers make them for children as something filling and energy-dense. That treatment of a confection as a staple food is unusual and says a good deal about how calorie-dense it is. It is sold in supermarkets in small packets and keeps for a long time without refrigeration, which is part of its usefulness. Making it at home is a sugar-syrup exercise, and the temperature of the syrup decides whether it sets crumbly or sticky.