Red Fruit Festival / Greek Caprese w/ Halloumi

*Post by Mark.

Recently Angela and I attended a launch party for the upcoming Mid-Atlantic Red Fruit Festival at the recently reopened Equinox. While enjoying some wine with other bloggers and members of the media, we learned about the festival's mission and their exciting tomato recipe contest.

This year's chosen red fruit is the tomato and immediately my brain started working into overdrive to come up with a recipe submission from our blog. 

If you live in the Washington D.C. area, they're still looking for submissions. You don't need to be a professional chef to submit your recipe. Just send the recipe, a photo of the tomatoes and a photo of the finished dish via email to wineandfoodeventsdc@gmail.com by 5PM EST Monday, September 6th. (Make sure to identify the local resource for your tomatoes.)

The Wine & Food Festival team of judges will select a total of 15 recipes to win in the following categories:

• Soups, Salsas & Appetizers
• Desserts & Quick Breads
• Main Courses & Sandwiches
• Beverages & Sauces
• Salads

The top recipes will earn their submitters a chance to be prepared by top area chefs like Todd Gray (Equinox), Kaz Okochi (KAZ Sushi Bistro, Masa 14) and RJ Cooper (formerly Vidalia, upcoming Rogue 24) at the big festival on September 24th at the Ronald Reagan International Trade Center. For more information on this year's big contest, check out the official rules at the Mid-Atlantic Red Fruit Festival blog. 

Unfortunately, Angela and I won't be able to attend the Festival, so I thought I'd share my recipe on the blog instead and maybe even inspire someone else in the process. My particular inspiration started with the classic caprese salad - an Italian side dish of mozzarella, basil and tomato. Given my recent addiction to the Greek cheese halloumi, I decided to take an entirely Greek spin on it (below).

Along with my tomatoes, I grabbed a few blocks of the cheese and some fresh basil from Whole Foods. Halloumi can be rather expensive, but it has a high melting point, so you can cook it in ways that would normally melt other cheeses. In my book, it's totally worth it.

The first order of business was to slice the tomatoes and halloumi into thick slices. Then I tossed my halloumi onto a grill pan (below). Lower temperatures seemed to work better - at the grill's higher temperatures, I think I actually found the cheese's unusually high melting point. 

As my cheese sizzled on the grill, I also started combining ingredients to make an orange-honey vinaigrette: 

• 1/4 cup orange juice
• 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• 3 teaspoons honey
• 1/8 teaspoon cracked black pepper

As I arranged my slices of fresh tomato, grillied halloumi, and basil leaves I drizzled the vinaigrette liberally over top.  When I was finished, I drizzled some extra honey to really complete the Greek touch. 

The thick, grilled, almost meat-like cheese proved a worthy addition to the caprese, and the acidity of the orange and the honey flavors helped cut through the halloumi's heaviness. Halloumi has also been known to be a little salty, but the honey really balanced it out with sweetness. If you get your hands on some fresh local tomatoes and get inspired to make anything, let us know what you came up with. 

Comments

[Eftychia]

Halloumi has its origin in Cyprus. My country. Thank you for using it to your recipes. We use it almost every where, even on pizza. I will try to give you some nice traditional recipes with halloumi in the near future.