Sesame Seed Nirvana

Whether consciously or not, most people have tasted tahini in some form or another, most likely in hummus. But that wonderful sticky, syrupy, yet slightly gritty sesame seed paste is more versatile than one may think and has found uses in an astonishing range of cultures.

Exposure to other cultures is exactly what drew Mark Stein, founder and president of Halvana, to making tahini and other sesame-based products, such as the dense sesame-seed cake called halva. Apart from flavour, he was attracted to a kind of small-is-beautiful ethos. “I’ve always been drawn to the charm of small artisan factories,” he says. “Tahini … is actually a nutrient-dense elixir, so it was love at first taste.”

During his travels, he discovered enchanting small factories in Israel, Jordan and Greece that followed what he calls “painstakingly old-age methods,” such as open-flame fire roasting and milling using ancient stones. “Modern methods cannot duplicate this tradition,” so Stein launched Halvana, a sesame seed-product company that holds the same hand-processed artisan traditions at its core.

The name Halvana is a combination of the words halva and Nirvana, the “wonderful place where the good and wholesome reside when you taste our products,” he says.

But they're not tasting a regular tahini. Stein says he takes it “out of the closet” by offering sweet, savoury and classic versions of the dense paste.

For him, one of the biggest payoffs is seeing people of all nationalities — Macedonians, Russians, Indians and Pakistanis — embrace the unique flavours of tahini — even if they don’t taste like the traditional products they’re used to.

In addition to tahini, Stein produces halva, tahini-filled Belgian chocolates and frozen vegan pops. The halva cakes weigh 3.5 kilograms and come in 15 different flavours, such as pistachio, pecan, whiskey and passion fruit, that are cut into slices for hungry customers. Each cake is painstakingly made by hand. Stein mixes the sugar, honey and raw tahini with paddles — labour intensive, but as he says, the effort is justified by the taste.

Stein’s ingredients are sourced from around the world, especially Ethiopia, which has one of the world’s largest sesame-seed crops. He sources other ingredients from Israel, Jordan and Greece. From his globetrotting travels, he's often brought back sesame-seed samples that have caused confusion at the border. He once told an agent he was carrying halva to which she replied “Halva?” She hadn’t heard of it. But she told him she'd heard of Challah and then suggested the best bakeries around Toronto to get the braided Jewish holiday bread.

Halvana  
Find it at: Pusateri’s (select locations), Harbord Bakery, online
halvana.com | info@halvana.com | @halvana