One of the best things about school holidays is the staying with grandparents. Come summer, it is the time to make not just jams, pickles, fruits syrups and squash but also time to make “halwa”. Making halwa was an elaborate activity. Measuring out the ingredients, dry fruits and getting the big vessels ready to make it, kept us, the grandchildren occupied.
“Halva. Name of a hugely varied range of confections made in the Middle East, Central Asia, and India, derived from the Arabic root hulw, sweet. In 7th century Arabia, the word meant a paste of dates kneaded with milk. By the 9th century, possibly by assimilating the ancient Persian sweetmeat afroshag, it had acquired a meaning of wheat flour or semolina, cooked by frying or toasting and worked into a more or less stiff paste with a sweetening agent such as sugar syrup, date syrup, grape syrup, or honey by stirring the mass together over a gentle heat. Usually a flavouring was added such as nuts, rosewater, or pureed cooked carrots (still a popular flavouring). The finished sweetmeat would be cut into bars or moulded into fanciful shapes such as fish. Halva spread both eastwards and westwards, with the result that is is made with a wide variety of ingredients, methods, and flavourings…” -Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999(p.367)
This dense, sweet confection believed to have originated in the Middle East, Central and South Asia is popularly known as halva or halwa, with varying local names. While written records of halva recipes have been in the Arabic Kitab al-Tabikh (The Book of Dishes, early 13th century), these recipes may have been there in the traditional cuisine well before then. These desserts are essentially of two types, flour based or nut butters based.
Relatively more popular in the South Asia, these flour based halvas are slightly gelatinous and made from grain flour (semolina or suji) with other basic ingredients like clarified butter, sugar or honey, dry fruits and flavouring syrups like rose water. The flour is fried in oil, mixing it into a roux and then cooked with a sugary syrup making it into a gelatinous flour based consistency.
Selmolina based halva include the popular Turkish un helvası. Usually made with wheat semolina, sugar or honey, butter or vegetable oil along with raisins, dates, other dried fruits, nuts like almonds or walnuts. This halva is very sweet, of a gelatinous texture with a rich, heavenly feel. The Indian halva recipes primarily use flour with melted butter or ghee and sugar (optional use of acacia gum). Made in various colours ranging from bright orange, red, green to brown and black; they have a gelatinous appearance and are flecked with raisins, cashew nuts, pistachios, almonds and even sesame seeds. Vegetable based recipes (to replace the flour) are there like the popular carrot halwa (gajjar halwa), mung beans halwa (moong dal halwa), doodi halwa (bottle gourd halwa), beetroot halwa to name a few. These are usually prepared with condensed milk and ghee with sugar added to give a moist, flaky texture when freshly prepared. In fact, there are numerous variations of halwa present in the Indian subcontinent with each flavour having its own special appeal.
Other flour based halwas include the Greek cornstarch-gelatinous halva, the Zanzibarian rice flour and coconut milk halva and the Burmese delicacy of Pathein halwa, a dairy-based rice flour halva.
The other variety of halva are nut butter-based. They are made from grinding the oily seeds to paste like consistency like the sesame paste (tahini), sunflower seed butter paste, mixed with hot syrupy sugar cooked to hard-crack state. It can be made crumbly as well. This type is more popular in the Mediterranean, Central Asian and Middle Eastern cuisine and has special tales of its’ own to weave.
“Halwa Al.
Two pounds of sugar, half a pound of bees’ honey, half a bound of sesame oil and four ounces of starch. Stir it middling fine [one the fire until it takes consistency, then spread it on a smooth tile]. Put four ounces of sugar on it, and three ounces of finely pounded pistachios, and musk and rose-water: Spread this filling on it, then cover it with another cloak of halwa and cut it up into triangles. It is as delicious as can be. If you wish, make the filling into meatballs like luqma [luqmat al-qadi], and cover it was the mentioned halawa, and it is saciniyya.” -Medieval Arab Cookery: Essays and Translations, by Maxime Rodinson, A.J. Arberry & Charles Perry [Prospect Books:Devon] 2001 (p. 456)
All said and done, halva, whether bought from the market, made at home or sent from grandma; it carries a ton of memories, nostalgia and a feeling of happiness starting from the first bite itself. For in every generation, these sweet or savoury (as to own taste) delicacies have delighted and captivated both the old and the young, the weight-watchers and the food-lovers and all those in between and far apart. Little wonder why then, this tradition and culture of halva still lives on over the centuries.
Sugar And Spice... Among Other Things 
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