Andy Makes Salted Chocolate Halva

I have anything on my face?

No?

He gave me an eye.

He was like...

Something on your face.

[group laughing]

[upbeat music]

I'm gonna do something today,

I'm gonna be making something,

I typically don't make a lot of sweets,

I like sweets, I don't have a huge sweet tooth,

I'm the only one in my family

that doesn't have the big sweet tooth.

My mother loves her pastries, my sister loves her candy,

and my father loves his soft caramels and his icecream.

Every single day he eats half a pint of icecream,

and he's a pretty lean guy,

he exercises and eats really healthy other than that.

But I'm gonna be making halva today.

This is a tahini based halva,

this is the one that you typically see the most in the U.S.

You'll see variations on this in the Middle East

as well as parts of India and Pakistan.

I kind of streamlined the method,

a lot of halva recipes will tell you to use a stand mixer,

this one does not require to use a stand mixer.

And I'm gonna show you guys how to make it.

Okay, we're gonna start by just spraying our loaf pan

with a bit of non-stick cooking spray.

I lined it with parchment with a three inch overhang,

this is just so you can easily lift the halva

after it's been set.

Gonna use some non-stick cooking spray,

try to do it in the sink

so it doesn't go all over your floor.

One and a half cups tahini, two tablespoons sesame seeds,

this is a mixture of black and white.

You don't have to, I just like the way it looks.

And a quarter teaspoon kosher salt.

We're just gonna give this a stir.

You'll see halva with all kind of fold ins,

this is sesame seeds, some people will put pistachios in

and on top, different types of nuts,

I just kept it simple

and kind of just went with sesame seeds.

Next we're gonna make the syrup

that we're gonna fold in to the halva,

and that's what's gonna add the sweetness

and also give it the shape.

We're gonna cook the sugar down to a syrup.

Okay we have a small saucepan, we have half a cup water,

we have one and a half cups sugar,

and just give this a stir.

I'm gonna turn this over to medium heat,

and we're just gonna stir this until the sugar dissolves.

You see right now that the water's cloudy,

you'll know that sugar has dissolved

once the water becomes clear again.

Once it's clear and the sugar's dissolved,

we'll put in our candy thermometer.

So, this is probably gonna take about 6 to 8 minutes

from beginning to start,

relatively quickly once the sugar has melted

we'll increase the heat to medium high,

take it up to 250 degrees.

[degrees in slow motion]

Okay, so now the sugar has dissolved I'm gonna stop stirring

from here on out, I don't wanna kind of increase

any kind of crystallization,

and I'm just gonna insert the candy thermometer here,

and wait til that goes and hits 250 mark

which is just slightly above,

in between soft ball and hard ball,

that's sort of gonna be soft ball stage.

This part happens really really quickly,

so you don't wanna walk away or anything like that.

Okay we just hit softball stage,

that's 240 and we're gonna let it go a little bit further,

and we want it to get to this stage

so that when you're mixing it into the tahini mixture,

it will crystallize and it'll make the tahini set,

and so it ends up giving it that kind of crumbly texture

that you expect when you're eating halva.

And we're good.

We're gonna take it off heat,

this is gonna happen really quickly.

The syrup has thickened, there's no color to it

'cause we're not taking it to a caramel.

And we're just gonna slowly stream it in,

and you're gonna see that tahini's gonna start to thicken.

You need to be really careful at this stage

so that nothing splatters.

[Man] Game over if something splatters.

Game over to your face, to your livelihood.

You're gonna work as quickly as you can,

and you're gonna continue to mix until the tahini mixture

starts to kind of pull away,

just like this from the sides of the bowl,

and then from there you're gonna transfer it over

and then just pat it down.

You wanna work quickly, so before it sets.

You don't wanna over mix, once it starts to pull away

from the sides you wanna stop,

because otherwise it's gonna be too crumbly and too dry,

you don't wanna work in too much air.

It's okay if it's not perfect.

I kind of just tap it down really hard like that.

We're gonna put that aside,

we're gonna let that set and harden.

Alright we have our halva that's cool, it's set,

I am just going to mold this.

You can just pull it out easily,

and then just kind of flip it over.

We'll let this sit.

And then we're gonna melt our chocolate,

this is bittersweet chocolate,

I definitely like the bittersweet chocolate for this

really because halva's already pretty sweet,

you have a good amount of sugar

and I kind of like the bitterness from the chocolate.

If you wanna go sweet could use semi sweet,

but I would definitely push for the bittersweet chocolate.

So we have a saucepan of simmering water,

we're gonna place our four ounces of chocolate over.

We don't want the water to have any direct contact

to the bowl.

And this will melt in a few minutes.

I was in video production.

[Man] Oh yeah?

Yeah, it was great.

It was so much fun.

Mr Herd, the first day of class for video production

he's like Kids, you guys are gonna make

a lot of ****** movies, and we're gonna watch them.

And I was just like What?

Who is this guy?

The movie I made was kind of based

off of Basic Instinct with Sharon Stone,

and Dublin Indemnity,

Dublin Indemnity and Sharon Stone.

'Cause we watched different kind of film periods

and we focused on film noir and I just got obsessed

with those two films.

Even though we didn't watch them in that class.

Okay, chocolate's melted, we're gonna move it,

ha!

Okay I'm gonna pour the chocolate over the halva,

I'm just gonna use a offset to kind of push

the chocolate through.

It doesn't have to cut each bit.

Okay, now I'm going to, while it's still melted,

I'm gonna use some different toppings.

The dried rose petals they're pretty coarse,

so I like to just kind of use my fingers

and kind of break them down a bit.

I have some of the sesame seeds that I reserved,

the black and white sesame seeds.

We have some edible dried flowers, corn flowers.

There is salt in the halva but I like a little bit

of flaky salt on top.

I'm gonna let this sit so the chocolate can set,

it's gonna take probably about 20 to 30 minutes.

[Man] What do you think about the show Big Mouth?

I don't even know what that is.

I like that shows are focusing on the early odds,

'cause it was a weird time period.

[Man] What do you think of the song Bigmouth?

The what?

[Man] The song Bigmouth.

Wait who's-

[Man] The Smiths?

Oh, I don't think we've ever spoken about The Smiths,

I've never been a big Smiths fan.

[Man] I didn't know that about you.

Yeah, no, no, no, no.

The Garden State soundtrack,

I think they wrote the Garden State soundtrack,

I don't know.

[Man] They weren't in the Garden State soundtrack?

They weren't?

I don't know why I feel like that was-

[inaudible]

Oh there is, yes in Garden State there's a thing

about liking The Smiths, that's it.

[Man] There is a thing about, yes.

They're a couple sad generations apart.

The chocolate is set, I'm gonna just kind of transfer

it over with my hands.

So this halva is sliceable but it's still crumbly.

This one's not too sweet,

especially with the bittersweet chocolate

and the amount of salt on top,

and why I love halva so much it's like it's almost aerated,

that just dissolves on your mouth

and it's really addictive.

It definitely can become messy, it's going to,

what's happening right now.

But I love it.

This is just one very simple version,

but again there's so many great versions

that are made with different type of nut or seed butters,

there's other halva's that are not even made

with seed butters, they're made with flours,

that are typical in Iran, Packistan, India,

which are really delicious but are very different from this.

Halva's one of those things that it's great on it's own,

but because of its savory quality it works really well

with other things,

so halva folded into icecream,

or on top of icecream is great.

Even though I don't have too much of a sweet tooth

I do love halva,

and this one's a really approachable recipe,

and hopefully you guys you'll make it.

So, look, look, look.

Look how many people are here,

they're just coming here to eat,

they're just coming here to eat.

And they're not tasting food right, this is not a tasting,

they're just eating food.

[Man] You're living the dream.

Yeah, not my dream!