News & Articles

During the recent heat wave, I wanted to grill something quick, easy and delicious. Halloumi cheese was the first thing that came to mind.

Halloumi is a dry sheep-and-goat milk cheese from Cyprus that I found here packed in a salty, herby brine.

But what to have with it?

After some thought, I decided to get a tube of sun-dried tomato polenta, and I’d grill rounds of that with the halloumi. I also got a nice slicing tomato and halved that to grill and then chop as a side.

Since my own basil plants are not yet large enough for a batch of pesto, I bought a jar of Barilla pesto to also serve on the side.

I sliced the chunk of halloumi in half, and after the coals had stopped flaming, I placed the halloumi halves, polenta rounds and tomato halves on the grill.

It didn;t take long for the halloumi to start browning and taking on grill marks. Just keep an eye on everything and turn as needed.

Everything finished about the same time. Taking a chunk of grilled halloumi with a piece of grilled polenta, grilled tomato and pesto seemed like a Meditteranean party in my mouth. 

Since everything cooked so quickly and the grill was still hot, I placed a peach and nectarine on the grill. I tried to cut them into halves and remove the pits, but when I tried I was doing more damage to the fruit than good, so I left them whole on the grill while I finished my halloumi meal.

Once done with that, I removed the pach and nectarine from the heat and let them cool before chopping the flesh, which went into a mixture of butter, brown sugar and maple syrup, and then into the microwave for a quick heat up. While that was happening, I whipped heavy cream with a 2 oz. chunk of cream cheese, a third cup of sugar and some more maple syrup for a yummy topping for the peach and nectarine, which went on top of quickly microwaved mini-lemon cakes, a bag of which I had picked up just for the occasion (because I couldn’t find pound cake).