Category Archives: Cheese

Winter Squash Salad with Waffled Halloumi Croutons and Pomegranate Vinaigrette

After my successful venture with Croffles (Croissant-Waffles), I started to look at other ingredients in my fridge with the same lens. Will it waffle, I wondered. It seems like such a shame to let my waffle iron sit in the cupboard gathering dust, only to pull it out twice a year to make waffles.

I had a package of halloumi cheese about to expire so I decided to experiment. I heated the waffle iron to medium and sprayed it lightly with cooking spray. I tried a range of thicknesses and settled on 1/2 inch slices. Because halloumi is so firm, it waffled beautifully. I achieved a burnished golden brown colour and crispy edges, with that tell-tale squeak in the centre. Resounding success.

I decided to build a winter salad around these “halloumi croutons”. Check out this video to see how it all came together.

I started with butternut squash. Seasoned with salt, smoked paprika and a good drizzle of olive oil I roasted it until tender and browned. I like to cut the squash into small pieces to maximize the crispy surface area. Pro tip: Use a grapefruit spoon to scoop out the seeds and stringy fibres in the squash. The serrated edge of the spoon is the perfect tool for this.

For greens I decided on a mix of baby kale, micro arugula, and shredded raw Brussels sprouts. Arugula, frisée lettuce, radicchio, and Tuscan kale would all be good choices. You need a fairly bitter, assertive lettuce/green to counterbalance the sweet squash and mild, salty cheese.

If you have a food processor with a slicing disc, it produces julienned Brussels sprouts in seconds. If not, with a sharp knife and some patience, and it can be done by hand.

Every salad needs crunch. This one comes from spiced walnuts. If you have never made your own spiced nuts before, it’s quite simple. A lightly beaten egg white acts as the glue to help the spices stick to the nuts. I used a mix of sugar, salt, sumac and a pinch of cayenne. They only take about 12 minutes to toast and they keep for weeks in an airtight container. You can play around with the nuts and spices.

For the dressing, I created a sweet and tangy pomegranate vinaigrette. Pomegranate seeds were the final garnish, twinkling like glittering jewels.

Click here to print recipe for Winter Squash Salad with Waffled Halloumi Croutons and Pomegranate Vinaigrette.

Grown-Up Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

When I was growing up, we made grilled cheese sandwiches on challah, with Kraft Single slices. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I think we can do better now that we’re adults. An aged cheddar or gruyere has amazing flavour, but the problem is, they don’t melt well. They separate and become a bit greasy when melted.

The genius folks at America’s Test Kitchen figured out how to solve that problem by combining the gruyere with a nice melting cheese, like brie. The cheeses along with a touch of white wine are combined in the food processor to make a smooth paste.

The America’s test kitchen version of this recipe took a savoury turn and added some mustard and chives. I approached it from the opposite end and added a sweet twist. I think that one of the most beautiful flavour pairings is Brie and figs. I doubled up on the fig flavour by using fig jam as well as fresh sliced figs. Fresh basil leaves added a welcome herbal note. For the bread, I used sourdough, but any nice hearty bread would work well here. Make sure you butter the outside of the bread, so that the sandwich browns evenly all over.

A non-stick skillet is ideal for this. Don’t rush things. Keep the heat nice and low, to allow time for the cheese inside to melt and for the outside to get golden brown and crispy, and not burned. Your patience will be rewarded with a beautiful cheese pull.

Roasted Cherries and Whipped Ricotta Tartines

Tartine is defined as an open faced sandwich, usually on toasted bread. It has come to mean “fancy toast”, as made popular by the charming Carrie Baird, one of my favourite cheftestants on Top Chef.

Tartines are an opportunity to use up all these little bits in the fridge and pantry, and call it dinner. This one came about because I had some cherries that were starting to go a bit soft. Cherries might not be the first fruit you think about roasting, but the heat of the oven causes the natural sugar in the cherries to caramelize resulting in a greater depth and intensity of cherry flavour!

I had a mix of Rainer and Bing cherries. Rainer cherry season is so short, I always get greedy and buy way more than we can possibly eat. This is a perfect solution for those leftover, slightly less than perfect cherries.

I seasoned the cherries with olive oil, a drizzle of honey and some thyme. They only take about 10 minutes in the oven. I was inspired by The Flavour Bible to pair cherries with thyme. It’s such an excellent resource book.

The whipped ricotta is an Ina Garten recipe. She starts with homemade ricotta, but gently tells us that store bought is fine. I had half a container of store bought, about to expire, languishing at the back of the middle shelf in my fridge, so I used that. The ricotta is mixed with a bit of feta, some cream cheese and a splash of lemon juice. It all gets buzzed in the food processor, for a creamy, tangy whipped dip.

I sliced up a baguette, on the diagonal, and toasted the slices, because we’re fancy here at salt and serenity. Leftover toasted sourdough slices would be very delicious.

Fig and Pistachio Baked Brie

Most of the baked brie recipes out there rely on ready-made puff pastry. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I’d like to offer an alternative. Wine pastry. Yes, you read that correctly. There is actual wine in the dough. It comes together quickly in the food processor, rolls out beautifully, and results in a supremely flaky pastry. The wine adds acidity to the dough, which provides a perfect counterbalance to the rich brie.

I learned how to make this dough many years ago when I worked in catering at Dinah’s Kitchen in Toronto. One of our most popular party items was a huge wheel of brie, topped with brown sugar and mixed nuts, and then enrobed in wine pastry. Once baked, the melty brie with the sugared nuts was an addictive combo.

Since nobody is having huge parties this year, I updated it using a mini 4 inch wheel of brie. I used fig jam and pistachios to flavour mine.

You can wrap the brie, brush it with egg and put it in the fridge up one day ahead if you like. Once baked, you must let it rest for at least an hour, or you will have molten brie running everywhere. You want it soft and melty, but not running like hot lava.

I went full-out cheese board and I just love how it turned out with all the red fruits I surrounded the gorgeous brie with. I topped the pastry with fig wedges, chopped toasted pistachios and some pomegranate seeds. Don’t they look like little jewels?

Any leftover will keep in the fridge for 2-3 days. Just reheat in a hot oven for a few minutes, until the pastry recrisps and the brie starts to melt.

Halloumi Panzanella Salad

Panzanella salad was created in Tuscany as a way to use up stale bread. It is customary to soak the stale bread in water and a bit of vinegar for about 30 minutes until it becomes soft, but not soggy. The first time I ever had it was about 10 years ago, on the Amalfi coast of Italy. I discovered that the time-honoured Panzanella salad is not my jam. I really dislike the texture of the soaked bread. I prefer my stale bread with a bit of crunch.

This salad was inspired by a very similar one at thefeedfeed.com. Start with some really good bread. A rustic sourdough would be perfect, if you happen to know anyone baking sourdough these days! Tear, rather than cut it into chunks, so it has lots of nooks and crannies to soak up the delicious dressing from this salad. Toss with olive oil and salt and toast in oven until golden brown. You want the croutons to still have a bit of chew to them.

For the tomatoes, since it’s not really peak tomato season yet, I went with a mix of supermarket imported large heirloom tomatoes, grape tomatoes and some tomberries.

The dressing for this salad uses a mix of lemon juice, red wine vinegar and olive oil. I love tomatoes with basil, so I went one step further and made some basil infused olive oil. It takes about 5 minutes to make and it’s so delicious. Whizz some olive oil (1 cup) and basil (1/2 cup) in the blender. Pour into a saucepan and simmer for about a minute. Strain oil and let cool before using.

Fry the halloumi cheese at the last minute, so it will still be warm and crispy when you serve the salad.