William Chong

I have a minor love affair with haloumi at the moment. (So does C, incidentally.)

It’s a Levantine cheese popular in many a Mediterranean restaurant (including that beautiful meal at Ima and Ibn). You can read more about its backstory at Wikipedia, but in my opinion the best thing about it is that you can fry it, like a steak.

We bought a block of it a couple of weeks back and thought it would be fun to try cooking it for ourselves. To ensure they fry properly and not melt, you need to cut them into reasonably-thick slices (about a 1-2 cm, or the thickness of your index finger), and use a high heat to get the beautiful seared look. Also, haloumi does not end well when microwaved (lunch leftovers the next day proved this).

For this dinner, we added radish slices, boiled potatoes, tomatoes, red onion (all from our trusty Foodbox) and served it with rice.

Yum!

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As an aside, we dropped by Barracuda in Bucklands Beach for our most recent date night. We didn’t eat too much to warrant a proper review, but I felt compelled to say a few things anyways:

• They had the worst antipasto platter I’ve come across in a restaurant setting. To be fair, it’s not a popular order, but C and I were given a hodge-podge of stuff that had seemed to have come from sitting in the fridge for weeks – vinegared cauliflower, olives, cold bread, some feta and cold sausage. My stomach definitely disagreed.
• They did serve us some tasty green-lipped mussels, drenched in a rich tomato pasta-style sauce. Which was tasty.

I’m sure others will have had more pleasant dining experiences – anyone else been before?