The Chefs Craving Halvah in Dishes Both Sweet and Savory
Some recipes for halvah, a sweet beloved across the Middle East, start with a roux of butter and semolina flour, while others are composed mainly of sugar syrup and tahini. But regardless of the method or the ingredients — which can include sesame seeds, nuts and chocolate — the ideal texture is the same: crumbly at first, giving way to something fudgier. “A great halvah has a balance of richness and sweetness,” says Andy Frantzeskos, 32, the head chef of London’s Rovi, who grew up watching his Greek father enjoy it with coffee. Last fall, Frantzeskos added it to the batter of his walnut cake, which he baked, deep-fried, topped with a bourbon-infused butterscotch and served with sherry ice cream. At Loquat bakery in San Francisco, the pastry chef and co-founder Kristina Costa, 37, offers halvah in a form Frantzeskos’s father would recognize — a small cube perched on the edge of a latte saucer — and also mixes creamy-sweet swirls of it through her brownies. “A good halvah should melt in your mouth,” she says, “but with a satisfying bite of al dente candy.”
While halvah traditionally appears as a dessert, it can also balance salty and umami flavors. At Albi in Washington, D.C., the chef and owner Michael Rafidi, 40, whips halvah into foie gras mousse before it sets and also sprinkles it atop the finished dish for texture. And other chefs are embracing a more ethereal form of the treat: halvah floss. Ayesha Nurdjaja, 46, the executive chef and a partner at New York’s Shukette, first tried this iteration, which is basically a frizzy cloud of halvah shards, in London. “I remember putting it on my tongue and it disintegrated like cotton candy,” she says. Back in New York, she decided to use a “crazy, fluffed up” pile of it as a final flourish for Shukette’s Mic Drop sundae, a tower of tahini soft serve topped with pomegranate molasses, hazelnuts and, when they’re in season, pomegranate seeds. The preparation might be new, but the flavor of halvah, she says, takes her right back to her childhood. “I was about 8 years old at Sahadi’s on Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn,” says Nurdjaja of her first taste. “It’s a sweetness that’s long lasting.” — Lauren Joseph
A Cozy Amsterdam Hotel in a 17th-Century Building
Amsterdam’s 17th-century Palace of Justice has just reopened as the 134-room Rosewood Amsterdam, the last major hotel development to be allowed within the city’s UNESCO-protected canal district. “The challenge was to integrate gezelligheid” — the Dutch word for “coziness” — “into a building that wasn’t originally designed to exude a warm atmosphere,” says the designer Piet Boon, who restored the structure’s neo-Classical woodwork, granite columns and decorative ceilings and installed an indoor pool, spa and lobby lounge. Eeuwen, the hotel’s restaurant, designed by the London-based firm Sagrada, focuses on North Sea regional specialties, while the bar serves home-distilled jenever (a Dutch liquor made from juniper berries). The nearby Rijksmuseum and its collection of old masters inspired much of the hotel’s color scheme, from the blue-gray lobby to the pale yellow guest rooms. Boon’s fellow Dutchman Piet Oudolf was enlisted to create a courtyard garden; like the designer’s perennial planting for New York’s High Line, it will provide depth and color year-round. Rooms from about $1,300 a night; rosewoodhotels.com/amsterdam. — Kate Maxwell
Here Comes the Sun Hat
A Watch That Displays 24 Time Zones at Once
The Swiss watchmaker Jaeger-LeCoultre, which traces its origins back to 1833, is known for many of haute horlogerie’s mind-bending innovations, from crafting the world’s thinnest mechanical movement to creating the first watch to have three — and, more recently, four — dials powered by a single movement. In 1931, tasked with figuring out how to shield polo players’ watch faces from the rigors of the field in India during the British Raj, the house invented the Reverso, with a delicately curved rectangular body that one could flip in its cradle, without removing the watch from the wrist, to reveal a protective steel back. In recent years, Jaeger-LeCoultre has explored the possibilities of the dual-sided timepiece, incorporating ingenious complications on the reverse surface. This new travel version in stainless steel or 18-karat pink gold displays 24 time zones simultaneously on an intricate circular map of the world, providing the wearer with a rare opportunity to be a part of history — while also turning the page. — Nancy Hass
Photo assistant: Karl Leitz
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