The Halva Queen’s Gambit

Hey there, GOLDA gang! 

This week I went to a trunk show organized by Sara Roberts of Goldie Home. Sara was one of our GOLDA Passover hotline experts, showing us how to create beautiful spring tablescapes at our Seder tables. The event showcased her new collection of beautiful hand-painted table linens alongside some of our favorite Jewish brands like Moio and Carola Spitzer (reader, I shopped). 

It was also a celebration of the publication of Sesame, the new cookbook from Seed+Mill founder Rachel Simons. Seed+Mill started as a counter at New York City’s Chelsea Market, where they serve up fresh artisanal halva and truly life-changing tahini soft serve, and now they also have a line of tahini and halva products that ship around the country. 

I stopped by Seed+Mill for some soft-serve and chatted with Rachel about her new cookbook, Sesame: Global Recipes + Stories of an Ancient Seed.  

Rachel, congratulations on your new cookbook! After years of making and selling tahini and halva, what made you decide that it was time to put it all in a book?  

This book is an aggregate of everything I've learned and heard over the past nine years at the Seed+Mill counter. If you stand at that counter for an hour, I can guarantee you’ll meet someone from somewhere around the world who has a sentimental or nostalgic connection to tahini or halva. Maybe they won't call it tahini or halva, but they'll know it. After years and years of hearing these stories and listening to how people were enjoying our products, I was inspired to put it together into a collection of stories. 

I didn't want it to be a book about Middle Eastern food. I think there's some amazing Middle Eastern cookbooks out there, and I'm a fan of all of them, but I didn't want it to be another Ottolenghi book or another Michael Solomonov book. I wanted this book to be aligned with my own family background and story. My family has had to move many, many, many times, and every time we've moved, food is the vehicle for feeling at home again.

I wanted the book to feel global, and for everyone in the world to see some part of themselves in the book. There are obviously a lot of Middle Eastern-inspired recipes in there, but I hope people will also feel that they see other regions represented.

It's funny, I use the Seed+Mill products in my house, and I think of them as part of my pantry. But to come here to Chelsea Market, it is a totally different story. There are tons of people everywhere. Some of them are locals, but there are a lot of people from all over the world who make this a destination. And so it’s poignant that your halva is here, as part of this world marketplace.

There are 20,000 people a day who walk through the market. You can't stand anywhere without hearing another accent at any moment in time. It's amazing. My favorite stories are the people that we’ve met. We've done halva wedding cakes for many people, but one of my favorites is a couple that came here for their first date and had our tahini soft serve. A year later, they got engaged, and they wanted a halva cake for their wedding. One of the members of the couple was from Pakistan, and the other was from India, and they both had their own love for halva. It made me so happy that I was able to facilitate that connection for them. 

So let’s break this down to the most basic element: How would you describe halva to someone who has never heard of it before? 

I like to think of halva as a vehicle that takes you through history. I'll start linguistically. Halwa is an Arabic word, and it means sweet. It's the OG of sweets: one of the oldest confections known to humans. It was something that was made and then shipped in days of old, before there was refrigeration and people were worried about shelf life. It was a very shelf-stable, simple ingredient product. It was the original dessert, really. 

Today I think it's defined by texture. It should have a very unique texture, which is hard to describe. It should be a little bit flaky, not too dense, not too chewy. But it does have a density to it, so it's very filling, very sweet, very decadent, very rich. And for that reason, you have small bites at a time. My favorite way to eat it is with a hot beverage. The heat melts the halva in your mouth, and then that taste lingers.

Let’s get to the root of Sesame, which is both the name of the cookbook and really what this whole operation is about. Walk us through the power of that little sesame seed.

When we think of sesame seeds, they're on a burger bun or a bagel or scattered here and there. I don't think people have any idea of what it looks like to actually harvest them. So I really wanted to showcase that harvest process in the book. They grow in these little pods, the size of a small olive. There are about 100 seeds per pod, and they grow in these little shrubs. As the pods ripen, they burst open—that's the origin of the phrase open sesame. Then the seeds scatter onto the ground, and you gather all of those seeds, roast the seeds, and then grind them into a paste. It’s a very labor intensive, manual harvest process

Sesame is really ubiquitous around the world. What we know from historical records is that it was first grown and cultivated in and around the Middle East, but now in Japan, China, and India it's just such a common, beloved seed. 

And I really liked that story of a seed. I want to think about what a seed is symbolic of: we all start as seeds, or you have the seed of an idea. I hope people will reflect on how we all start somewhere and grow. 

It's fascinating because we're talking about food, but you're also talking about so much more. You're talking about ourselves, our families, our communities, and our worlds, right? 

Exactly. This book is also a very personal story of my own historical movement. My ancestors just traveled and traveled–it's a very Jewish story of the Wandering Jew. My great, great, great grandparents were in Spain, and they ended up in the Bohemia/Transylvania area. My grandparents were born in Czechoslovakia. My mum ended up being born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. I was born in Australia, then I left and moved to London, then Tel Aviv, then Hong Kong, and now I live here in New York City.  

Each of these little moments and journeys is symbolic, a mirror to this idea of a seed that travels and gets planted and replanted and just keeps growing in different environments. It’s a story of Jewish culture and Jewish food, which has also moved and moved and moved. It’s truly a melting point pot of cuisine. It's not just chicken soup and matzo balls. 

What are some of the things readers will find in Sesame?

I start with the simplest things that don't really require recipes: put tahini in a salad dressing, put it in dips, drizzle it on ice cream. When you're making granola at home, you often add a fat. Most people add olive oil to make it a little bit crispy, but you can use tahini. It’s an oil, it's a fat, and so it has that same emulsification and gives your granola a great depth of flavor, a bit of extra nutrition, and crisps it up in the oven.

Then I get into baking. I love adding tahini to a chocolate chip cookie. A chocolate chip cookie is amazing, but I think the tahini is game changing. The essential three ingredients in baking are sugar, butter, and flour. I love to add tahini to that, in cookies, crumbles, cobblers, and pastries. The tahini is just another layer of fat, so however you're going to use butter, you can add a bit of tahini and take out a bit of the butter, or you can actually replace it with butter altogether. 

The book's not vegan or vegetarian: I'm still a butter fan, but I will add extra tahini for flavor and complexity. It just elevates everything in a way and gives it that sense of “oh, I taste something different, what is that?” There's a chocolate tahini tart that I love, there's a tahini frozen cheesecake that I think is going to be great for Shavuot.

Do you feel like food is the way you connect to your Jewish identity?

Absolutely. Nothing makes me happier than hosting a Shabbat dinner. I host as many Shabbats as my family will let me. I love having strangers at my Shabbat table. I love having friends, family, and strangers all together. GOLDA readers, you're all welcome at my Shabbat table.

I’m still dreaming about that soft serve. Thanks to Rachel for sharing her story, and for helping me stock up on all the tahini my apartment can hold. 

There’s a great new movie premiering this week in NYC. Ada: My Mother the Architect has everything: Israeli architectural genius, complicated mother-daughter relationships, and beautiful visual storytelling. I absolutely loved it. The film will be playing at the Angelika Film Center with a lineup of great conversations after the showings.

Join me at my upcoming NYC-area events! This Wednesday I’ll be at The Altneu in conversation with Kelsey Osgood. And on Thursday I’ll be at The Jewish Museum talking to with authors Stuart Nadler and Iddo Gefen.

On Tuesday, May 13, I’ll be at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan interviewing Myriam Sandler of MotherCould about her new book, Playful By Design.

And on Monday, May 19, I’m heading to the Port Washington Public Library to talk about my book, The Newish Jewish Encyclopedia.

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Stay GOLDA, 

Stephanie