I originally used this recipe as it was intended, a spice dip for bread dipped in oil. However, now I use it to sprinkle over fish or to spice up vegetables for some variety.

 

Original recipe by Sophie Grigson from Sophie Grigson’s Weekends

Servings: 4

Level of difficulty: Easy

Preparation Time: 5 minutes

Cooking Time: 5 minutes

Ingredients

4 tbsp sesame seeds

2 tbsp coriander seeds

1.5 T cumin seeds

1.5 T black peppercorns

.5 T coarse sea salt

30g toasted hazelnuts

2 tsp ground cinnamon

Method

1. Heat a small, heavy-based frying pan over a medium heat and add the sesame seeds. Shake gently until they turn a shade darker and give out a nutty smell. Tip them into a bowl.
2. Repeat this process with the coriander and cumin seeds. Allow them to cool and crisp up for a few minutes.
3. Place the sesame seeds, coriander, cumin, peppercorns and salt in a clean coffee grinder and grind finely**.
4. Finely chop the hazelnuts in the grinder, taking care not to over-blend them into a paste.
5. Mix the finely chopped hazelnuts with the sesame seed mixture and the cinnamon. Store in an airtight container until needed. (I store in a jar in the fridge and it keeps a long time)

**If, like me, you like a little more texture in your Dukkha, don’t grind the sesame seeds, and leave the nuts a courser texture as well, but not grinding too finely. Also, depending on the strength of your peppercorns, this can have quite a ‘kick’ to it, so maybe start with only 1T then add more if you want to the next time around.

*Also, I have recently discovered that drying citrus zest, and mixing it in to the Dukkha when I serve it, gives it an extra bit of flavour.  To dry citrus zest, grate using a microplane so that the pieces are small, leave on a small dish in the air to dry (unless you live in the tropics, in which case, you might need to dry in the oven on a very low temp)  Here in Alice the zest dries out overnight, or even in a day.