Dukkah or Duqqa is a Middle-eastern dish which is a mixture of nuts, spices and herbs. It is quite versatile – I made mine to serve as a starter with bread. To use it this way, you serve some fresh crusty bread of your choice, a dish of olive oil with some balsamic vinegar added, then you tear off a piece of bread, dip it in the oil/balsamic and then dip it in the dukkah so that the dukkah mixture sticks to the bread. You can also dip fresh veggies in the same way. Dukkah can also be used as a crust for fish or chicken that you are going to oven bake or pan fry. This recipe makes quite a large quantity, so adjust the quantities to suit your needs. this quantity will easily serve 8 people if you are implementing the bread/oil starter idea, and you still might have some left over to use as a crust for a midweek meal.
There are a lot of variations, the following is the version that I made, but you can use different varieties of nuts, herbs and spices to get different flavour combinations. You don’t have to fry and toast the ingredients, but it really makes the end result more flavoursome if you make the effort.
This is what I did:
1. I heated the oven to 180 deg C. I put 120g of hazelnuts on a baking sheet and toasted them for about 5 minutes, shaking them regularly. Don’t burn them. When you take them out they should smell nice, as if the flavours are being released. I then whizzed up the nuts in a food processor so that they were a nice biscuit crumb consistency, and placed them in a large bowl.
2. I dry fried 80g of sesame seeds in a heavy based pan for 2 minutes, shaking them around as they heated. I then added them to the hazelnuts.
3. I dry fried 2 tablespoons each of coriander and cumin seeds in the same pan for 1-2 minutes until the aroma was released. I then ground them up in my spice grinder and added them to the bowl.
4. I added a further tablespoon of smoky paprika, a dash of chilli and a tablespoon of mixed dried herbs, along with approx 2 teaspoons of ground black pepper and a teaspoon of salt.
5. I mixed it thoroughly, and then tasted the mixture, adjusting the salt and pepper to taste.
Variation ideas are detailed below – you can have fun making the mixture that suits your tastes:
Nuts you can use include pine nuts, brazils, macadamias, almonds, pistachios, cashews. You can also add chilli, star anise, fennel seeds, cloves, cardamom, cayenne, thyme, mint, oregano etc.
Truly Scrumptious 
Comments on: "Dukkah" (1)
Great post 😁