Dukkah -- so simple to make, so gooooood to eat

I've become a relatively recent convert to dukkah: a mixture of ground-up, toasted nuts, spices, and seeds. You use it as a dip of sorts -- dip a bite-sized piece of GOOD bread into some olive oil, dab it into the dukkah, and eat. Terrific!

Take about a half-teaspoon of each of these: whole cumin seed and whole coriander seed. Add a teaspoon each of black sesame seed and white sesame seed. Add a quarter-teaspoon of cardamom seed. Add a very small pinch of hot pepper flakes (like they put on the table in pizzerias (at least the ones in New Jersey)). Toast them all together in a hot, DRY frying pan until they JUST, JUST start to give off the tiniest bit of smoke. Immediately tip them onto a plate to cool.

Next, keeping the burner and the pan hot, dump in about a cup of hazelnuts. Toast them for a few minutes, jiggling the pan often so that more surfaces come in contact with the heat. Once they've browned a bit, chuck them in a food processor or blender or hand-cranked chopper (that's what I've got, and I'd never be without it).

While the pan is still hot (although you might be able to get away with turning the burner off entirely at this point), chuck in about a quarter cup of shredded UNSWEETENED coconut (for those Australians reading this, most of the shredded coconut sold in America has sugar added to it. Yes, yes, I know. But we're talking the land of doughnuts for breakfast here). The coconut will turn brown very, very quickly. As soon as it does, chuck it in the chopping device with the hazelnuts. (You won't need either the burner or the pan again for this dish.)

Chop up the nuts and the coconut until they're quite finely chopped -- almost at the powder stage. Grind the spices very finely; I've got an enormous stone mortar and accompanying pestle, one of my most treasured possessions, and it works pretty well. I've also got a battery-operated pepper mill that is almost entirely useless for spices, including pepper. But it makes a cool sound and a light comes on when you push the button. So that's okay. Add a few grinds of black pepper, a quarter teaspoon or so of paprika, and a very modest pinch of salt. Use the chopping device to mix it all together (and smallify any hazelnut chunks that had escaped your zeal earlier).

Put it in a bowl. Put some olive oil in another bowl. Cut the bread into small-enough chunks that no-one is tempted to put a chewed-on piece of bread back into the oil and the dukkah (ew ew ew, so rude). Eat.

The dukkah keeps quite well in a sealed container in the fridge, and you can use it for other stuff. I found that dumping a quarter-cup or so in with rice when it's cooking makes the rice mighty tasty, just as an example. It would probably be really good in salads, too, or mixed through pasta (with, of course, some olive oil).