Bad pun done but it does seem to be the case that there are some very different things in the world that get called halva although, to my tastes, all the ones I’ve tried so far are sweet and delicious. I was inspired to try making some over the weekend after watching Rick Stein on TV taking a trip through Turkish cuisine.

The recipe I tried, which I think was along the lines of the one he showed , was from Food.com: Halva (A Greek Sweet Using Semolina). As you would expect, it uses semolina – 2 units (I measured using a small espresso mug) of semolina cooked in 1 unit of olive oil, enhanced with 1 unit of chopped walnuts and then transformed with a syrup made by heating 2 cups each of sugar, water and milk together. You add the syrup to the cooked semolina, stir until very thick and then remove from the heat and put into some sort of mould (I used a silicon muffin tray to make small portions).

Once cooled, the result was delicious but it wasn’t quite the thing I had in mind – my original mental picture was more of a sesame flavoured fudge along the lines shown here:

However, I can live with diversity. That’s another recipe to try and potentially two tasty treats I’ll be able to keep in my repertoire.