The key to the versatility of halloumi cheese is its high melting point – you can’t grill a lump of cheddar on a barbecue. Packaged in brine, it also keeps for ages – the halloumi in my fridge passes its best-before date at the end of August, and I don’t remember when I bought it. Sliced and fried (not too long; a couple of minutes on each side), with a squeeze of lemon, halloumi adds a salty, pleasantly squeaky note to almost any salad. But there’s more than one way to cook with halloumi. Here are 17 to be getting on with.
First up is Claire Thomson’s recipe for halloumi itself. I can see that if you’re looking for innovative ways to use up your halloumi surplus, making more halloumi is a little counterproductive, but this is a project you can embark on with kids, and the process alone is worth reading about. The recipe’s biggest drawback is that it calls for 10 litres of milk. “They’d think you were insane at the shop,” my son said, perfectly crystallising my anxieties. A couple of months ago I could have pretended I was hoarding, but not now.
Actually, anything sold as halloumi in the UK has to come from Cyprus – they hold the trademark – but the cheese does not as yet have Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status in the EU, chiefly because of disputes about the proportion of cow’s milk (if any) that ought to be allowed. High-end halloumi will be made solely from sheep and/or goat’s milk, while cheaper versions can contain up to 80% cow’s milk. Once a niche ingredient, halloumi has become so popular worldwide that there was a shortage last year. Halloumi-style cheeses are also produced in the UK, but Britain remains the largest importer of the genuine article, consuming 40% of Cyprus’s overall output.
Salads and snacks
Halloumi has an affinity with mint – it is often packaged with little flakes of mint floating round it – but that doesn’t mean you can’t use other herbs. A sprinkle of oregano, for example, works wonders. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall uses parsley when combining halloumi with new potatoes and asparagus. In Cyprus, halloumi is commonly paired with watermelon in summer, and Nigel Slater’s grilled halloumi with watermelon salsa is a fresh, uncomplicated take on the idea. He recommends chilling the salsa for a while to heighten the contrast with the just-grilled cheese.
A freekeh salad with nectarine and halloumi from Thomasina Miers offers another pairing of halloumi and fruit and, if you don’t have nectarines, she suggests that dried apricots or blackberries would work as well. This orzo and halloumi salad, although fruitless, is in the same vein.
Because it stands up so robustly to cooking, halloumi is often treated as if it were another sort of food altogether. It can work as a sort of fat chip for dipping or you can prepare it in the manner of a fish finger – rolled in egg and breadcrumbs and fried and, in this case, served as an accompaniment to creamed aubergine.
Barbecued
Thanks to its saltiness and its firm bite, halloumi is widely deployed as a meat substitute, to the extent that a fat slab of grilled halloumi in a bun has served as an emergency veggie burger at many a meat-eater’s barbecue. To be perfectly honest, you could do a lot worse, but a little extra effort is rewarded. You can team it with portobello mushrooms or with grilled pineapple, slaw and chipotle paste.
For a more considered approach, try this halloumi burger from David Frenkiel and Luise Vindahl, in which the cheese is grated together with carrot and courgette before cooking, and served not in a bun but in a cabbage leaf.
Anna Jones uses two kinds of flour to produce crispy halloumi and courgette fritters, while her contribution to the barbecue is a harissa and lime halloumi flatbread.
Cut into chunks, halloumi also makes excellent skewer material, alternated with wedges of onion, pepper and tomatoes for veggie kebabs, like those assembled by Jamie Oliver. If you are not vegetarian, you can even alternate it with meat: Natalie Salmon’s instructional video for steak and halloumi kebabs chimichurri contains hardly any instructions – she’s really just putting ideas in your head.
Pies and pastries
Flaounes are a traditional Cypriot pastry made with halloumi; Paul Hollywood has a recipe here. Traditionally, they contain mahalepi (or mahleb), a spice made from powdered cherry stones, which is not everyone’s idea of a store-cupboard staple, but it is pretty widely available online or in specialty shops. If you can’t source it, there are many suggestions for substitutes, including a combination of almond extract and star anise. Alternatively, you might want to try these non-traditional halloumi scones.
Finally, for a quick vegetarian supper this simple aubergine and halloumi pie made with store-bought puff pastry, is hard to improve upon. Even making your own puff pastry would somehow ruin it.
