Halloumi is one of my favourite cheeses: I had a bit of a binge on it a few years ago. This involved microwaving a slab and then eating it. Squeaky and delicious. It does have a ridiculously high melting point, so we were dubious about how well it would work as a halloumi toastie. There is only one way to find out.
Halloumi Toastie: Cyprus Grill
– Fried halloumi
– Fired onions and peppers
Halloumi Toastie: Squeaker
– Raw halloumi
– Sun dried tomatoes
Taste.
Cyprus Grill, because if I were selling it, it’s what I’d call my street food company. It confirmed that our melting fears were probably right. The best part about molten cheese is that it gets mixed into everything else, drastically increasing cheese levels. Here it was peppers, onions and halloumi, which could almost have been served separately. Still enjoyed the squeakiness though. 4/10
Squeaker was, in many ways, just the same. Halloumi, even from raw, does melt inside a toastie, but stays in exactly the same shape. You them occasionally get a spanking of sun dried tomato, but the flavours feel disconnected from one another and the tomato overpowers a cheese that isn’t trying to get involved in the first place. 4/10
Appeal
I was in London for New Years, and there was a street food vendor there selling halloumi. On chips. It was great halloumi, but cheese and chips is about melting, just like it is with a toastie, so I’m not sure about the chips. Still, the general consensus is that we, as a nation, love that cheese. So I think that sticking some in a toastie would actually work, but sadly isn’t especially good. 6/10
Suitability as a signature.
No, not really. No part of this works well for me. 0/10
Difficulty Rating
To be honest, you’re better off just frying a slab of halloumi and eating that. The halloumi toastie might be a thing of the future, but it needs a lot more tinkering.
Due to the stability of the cheese when fried it did give us an idea that we will be trying later in the month. Watch this space.
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