Recipe Testing: Halloumi, Tomatoes, White Beans.

We’re starting off nice and simple: Crispy Halloumi with Tomatoes and White beans by Nargisse Benkabbou from NYT Cooking.

Halloumi has been on my mind lately since my mom has been cooking with it these past few months! We had gone out to a few middle eastern restaurants around the city that had shown us how versatile this salty, dense, cheese is. Needless to say, we’ve been inspired, and while she’s been on her game adding halloumi to her cooking, I’m just now getting around to it.

Since this is also my first official recipe back in my kitchen, I thought it would be nice to start simple, so I turned to the overfilled folder full of saved recipes on the New York Times Cooking site. After browsing, I found this recipe and couldn’t argue with the prospect of using three ingredients I will forever love: tomatoes, white beans, and cheese.

Let’s get into it!

This took me about 30 mins. Also, I forgot to buy garlic and parsley but it still came out delicious. I went crazy with garlic powder just in case.

This recipe yields 4 servings, but it’s really closer to 2-3 servings.

Ingredients:

• Olive oil
• 1 lb cherry or grape tomatoes, halved lengthwise 
• 2 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley, plus more for serving  
• 1 teaspoon honey, plus more for serving
• ½ teaspoon dried oregano or thyme
• Salt and black pepper
• 1 (15-ounce) can cannellini beans, butter beans or navy beans, drained
• 1 (8-ounce) block halloumi, cut into ¼-inch-thick slices 
• ½ lemon

Directions:

1. Set broiler to high heat, with a rack positioned in the upper third of the oven, 3 to 4 inches from the heat source.
2. In a large, ovenproof pan over medium heat, combine 2 tablespoons olive oil with the tomatoes, garlic, parsley, honey and oregano. Season with salt and pepper and cook, stirring frequently, until the tomatoes soften and release their juices, about 10 minutes.
3. Stir in the beans and cook until heated through, about 3 minutes. Taste and season with more salt and pepper if needed. Turn off the heat.
4. Arrange the halloumi slices on top of the tomato-bean mixture in the pan. Transfer the pan to the oven. Broil until the halloumi is golden and crispy on top, about 5 minutes, depending on the oven’s broiler strength.
5. Drizzle generously with olive oil, squeeze the lemon half over the pan and add a light drizzle of honey. Garnish with parsley and serve immediately, with bread if desired.

Here are some more pics of the cooking process:

So my oven only broiled half of the cheese – but this still came out so delicious. Heated up some bread and there were so many flavors here! The juiciness of the tomatoes, earthiness of the beans, slight sweetness from the honey, bite from the lemon, saltiness from the cheese, all complimented by the oregano. It was great, I loved this.

My honest review: I will absolutely be making this again – and I won’t forget garlic or parsley next time! I think that this recipe is great on it’s own, but could also be modified to fit whatever is in your pantry. I think it could be fun to try out different herbs and seasonings if you wanted to. My only note is that I am going to add more tomatoes next time.

Taste: 7/10. Needs fresh garlic (my fault) and more tomatoes.

Difficulty: 2/10. This required minimal prep and was all in one pan which made it so small-kitchen friendly! 2 because my broiler is funky?

Price: 4/10. Giving it a 4 because Trader Joes was sold out of halloumi so I bought it at a gristedes near me on broadway for THIRTEEN DOLLARS. I could not believe my eyes. If it wasn’t for that, this would be a 1/10 price.

Hope you enjoyed this first recipe testing post! Write soon.

-M3