Halloumi: Vegetarian Recipes Starring Your New Favorite Cheese - Hardcover

Zepernick, Rasmus

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1771514469 ISBN 13: 9781771514460

Publisher: Touchwood Editions, 2024

Synopsis

"A gorgeous, meatless foray into halloumi!" —Tenaya Darlington, author of Madame Fromage's Adventures in Cheese

A brightly photographed and whimsically designed collection of 40 recipes to get you started cooking with halloumi.

Have you met halloumi? Traditionally made with a combination of sheep’s and goat’s milk, it’s the Cypriot cousin to cheeses like mozzarella and paneer. With a high melting point that means it grills and fries well, it’s an excellent meat substitute and a versatile ingredient for those either immersed in or moving toward the vegetarian life—or for anyone looking for a delicious new way to diversify their diet. And now that it’s much more widely available in grocery stores, you’re going to need ideas. How about . . .

• Halloumi Fries
• Summer Skewers
• Risotto
• Fried “Pork Belly”
• Winter Salad
• Chili sin Carne
• Tikka Masala

Drawing on a range of cuisines, the 40 recipes in Halloumi span classic favourites, summer salads, comfort dishes, winter warmers, and author Rasmus Zepernick’s vegetarian take on some of his family’s best-loved meat dishes. With its bright photography and whimsical design, and recipes that rely on basic ingredients and simple methods, the book makes a fun, practical intro to the exciting world of halloumi. Whether you’re boosting a simple salad or side dish into a nutritious lunch, or hosting a pack of ravenous vegetarians, you’ll find something here to fit the bill.

About this title

About the Author

Rasmus Zepernick is passionate about sharing his love for halloumi with the world, and in doing so he created this book. For the past four years, he has made and remade countless dishes with halloumi as the centerpiece, and this book serves as a comprehensive collection of his all-time favorites.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

What is Halloumi?

Halloumi is to the Cypriots what feta is to the Greeks and brie to the French: a source of national pride.

This firm and savory cheese is a Cypriot delicacy, traditionally made by combining goat’s and sheep’s milk with mint—however, many manufacturers mix in cow’s milk for practical reasons. Halloumi has a saltier flavor than other white cheeses you might be familiar with, as well as a slightly higher fat content. It’s also rich in protein and calcium, both of which are essential elements of a healthy diet.

Halloumi has a high melting point of 275°F which makes it ideal for pan-frying or grilling, as it holds its shape even when subjected to very hot temperatures.

In recent years, its rise in popularity has made halloumi available in most supermarkets where you can find it next to other white cheeses such as feta and mozzarella. Halloumi-like products are also available in supermarkets, sometimes going by the generic name “grilled cheese” because authentic Cypriot halloumi can only come from Cyprus, just as authentic Greek feta can only come from Greece. I recommend buying real halloumi whenever possible, to ensure that you get the purest quality and best results with my recipes.

 

Introduction

The idea for this book came to me several years ago, when I stopped eating meat. I missed many of the recipes I used to make, and even though I no longer ate beef I still appreciated a good burger. At the same time, I found it difficult to adapt my eating habits to a vegetarian diet and didn’t feel like changing them just because I no longer used that one ingredient. And so I began to think of ways to avoid giving up all the dishes I was so fond of. When my girlfriend introduced me to halloumi, it was as if all the pieces fell back into place: I could keep cooking the food I loved without meat. With this book, I hope to inspire more people to try halloumi, through a collection of recipes that range from well-known classics from the global kitchen, to family favorites and original creations from my own kitchen. Halloumi makes for a perfect meat substitute in my opinion, but it’s also a wonderful addition to meat-based dishes. In fact, halloumi tastes great with almost anything and I would go so far as to say that many of the dishes I used to make have improved since I made the switch. That’s why none of the recipes in this book include meat—even those that typically would—because I want to show how easy it is to use halloumi as an equally tasty substitute.

While most of the recipes in this book will likely look familiar to you, some might seem completely foreign. However, all of the recipes have one thing in common: They are designed to be simple and easy to make. There is nothing more frustrating than having to figure out a recipe that asks for ingredients you’ve never heard of, or requires you to stand in the kitchen for hours with a bunch of fancy kitchen appliances you might never use again. I wanted to show that almost any dish can be improved by adding halloumi, and that vegetarian cooking is so much more than bitter greens and salads—although I would be lying if I said I haven’t included a few scrumptious salad recipes, with halloumi straight from the grill.

I have done my absolute best to ensure that each recipe uses as few ingredients as possible, because I often find impossibly long and complicated ingredient lists a pain to work with. That’s why I’ve crafted each recipe to be simple and flavorful, so that anyone can experience the wonderful taste of halloumi. I hope you’ll love it as much as I do. Enjoy!

Edition details

• Publisher: Touchwood Editions
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1771514469
• ISBN 13: 9781771514460
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 144