Dukkah

Today I made dukkah--an ultra-popular spice blend in Egypt, but one I'd never eaten before.  I followed Claudia Roden's recipe in The New Book of Middle Eastern Food.  The ingredients are skinned hazelnuts, sesame seeds, coriander seeds, and cumin seeds, all roasted and ground with some salt and a little bit of pepper.  I thought it would be easy, but it was an adventure.

Hazelnuts don't come skinned.  No problem, I thought--I'll just blanch them.  I boiled those suckers for 10 minutes and it didn't work; the skins weren't coming off.  So I did some web research.  Most sites recommended roasting them and then rubbing them hard against each other inside a dish towel.  Sounded awful.  I tried this approach with the hazelnuts I had boiled, and it was a mess.  I wasn't too optimistic about the roasting and rubbing approach.  Luckily, a bit more online research led me to THE way to skin hazelnuts.  Boil them...in water that contains a bunch of baking soda.  The skins come right off after that.

Another problem was that I didn't recognize just how many coriander seeds were required for this recipe.      I saw "coriander seeds" and thought CHECK--got that in the cabinet.  But Roden's recipe calls for 1 3/4 cups!  That's about 3 big bottles worth of coriander seeds.  I may have had 1/4 cups worth in the cabinet.

When I finally was able to make this recipe, it turned out great.  It is addictive when combined with olive oil as a dipping sauce for bread--much like zaatar in concept, but very different in taste.