SMALL BITES

New produc ts and delicious ideas from food editor Sally Butters

Food editor Sally Butters discovers an exotic spice blend and gets creative with carob

I’ m tr ying: HAWAIJ

No, that’s not a spelling mistake. As much as I’d enjoy a Hawaiian holiday just now, what I’m doing instead is playing around in my kitchen with hawaij.

It’s a spice blend commonly used in Yemenite Jewish cooking and as far as I know you can’t buy it here – yet. But it is easy to make yourself, and it’s a lovely blend for warming up wintry dishes.

There are actually two types of hawaij: one used for savoury cooking and one suited to sweeter things. It’s the “sweet” one I’ve taken to. It’s properly called hawaij for coffee, which gives a clue to what it is traditionally used for – spicing up cups of Yemeni coffee.

I’m not a coffee drinker, but the spices in hawaij for coffee – most often ginger, cinnamon, cardamom and cloves – lend themselves perfectly to mugs of hot chocolate and many baked goods. Basically anything that’s chocolatey, coffee-flavoured or a mix of the two is made more interesting with a touch of hawaij for coffee. I like the idea of a spiced-up mocha cake or hawaij chocolate mousse, and I don’t see why carrot cakes and apple or pear puddings wouldn’t benefit from a pinch of the stuff, too.

A basic hawaij for coffee recipe I found uses half a teaspoon each of ground ginger and cinnamon mixed with a pinch of cloves and the ground seeds from six or seven cardamom pods but there are plenty of other options on the web. Like all spice blends, there are many variations.

The “savoury” version of hawaij is an aromatic combination of cumin, pepper, cardamom and turmeric, plus optional coriander, cloves, saffron or nutmeg – again, perfect flavours for winter. I plan to make a batch of this hawaij too, to sprinkle into belly-warming soups and stews and rub into meat.