Haloumi And Chargrilled Eggplant Salad

Haloumi is a cheese that I often use to cook with when I'm making a vegetarian meal for dinner. It's so tasty when fried until crispy on each side and gives a beautiful texture and saltiness to any meal.

Often I match haloumi with asparagus and orange to make a light and fresh salad for when the weather is warm. Now that the weather is starting to cool down a little bit, it's nice to have a bit more body to a salad to make it more filling and hearty.

I often chargrill zucchini, but don't tend to use eggplant so much. When eggplant is roasted or chargrilled, it becomes soft and starts to fall apart, giving it such lovely flavour and soft texture. If you don't like the regular spongy texture of eggplant, then you must give this a go.

 To go with the extra body of the chargrilled eggplant, I wanted a dressing that also had a bit of oomph. Roasted red capsicum it was to be! I had some roasted and preserved red capsicum in the fridge that needed using up, which were perfect to whiz into a dressing. You could use bought red capsicum, but making it yourself is so easy.

Simply cut a red capsicum in half, remove the seeds and membrane and then grill under high heat until the skin blackens and blisters. Really, the blacker the better! Wrap the whole lot up in some foil or place in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap for about 10 minutes. When cool enough to handle, the blackened skin will peel right off.

To make the dressing, you need the soft, juicy roasted capsicum, some extra virgin olive oil, verjuice or vinegar and salt and pepper to taste. Whiz it all up in a small food processor until it's of a drizzling consistency and season. You don't want the sweetness of the capsicum overpowered by the acidity in the verjuice or vinegar, so add a little bit at a time. I used about a tablespoon for 1/2 cup capsicum and 1 tablespoon of oil. Adjust to suit your taste.

Chargrilled Eggplant Salad With Roasted Red Capsicum Dressing

3 small vine ripened tomatoes, halved

Olive oil for drizzling

2 eggplants, sliced lengthways into 5mm slices

Salt for sprinkling

1/2 cup roasted red capsicum pieces

1 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

1 Tbs verjuice

A handful of rocket leaves

1 spring onion, sliced into thin rounds

A handful of pine nuts

250g packet of haloumi, cut into 5mm slices

A teaspoon of sumac

Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.

Place halved tomatoes on a roasting tray and drizzle with oil and season to taste.

Roast for about 10 minutes or until the skin starts to split and the flesh softens.

Remove from the oven and set aside.

While the tomato is roasting, place the pinenuts in a small tin and roast in the oven for 5 to 10 minutes, checking and shaking frequently so they don't burn.

When they are golden brown remove from the oven, tip onto a cold plate and set aside to cool.

For the eggplant, sprinkle salt generously over the eggplant slices and leave for about 15 minutes until the bitter juices start to seep out.

Rinse the eggplant to remove the salt and bitter juices and then pat dry with paper towel.

Drizzle the oil over the eggplant and fry in a chargrill pan until the flesh starts to soften and grill marks appear on one side. Turn and cook on the other side.

Remove eggplant from the pan and set aside in a bowl to cool.

For the dressing, place red capsicum, verjuice and oil in a small food processor and whiz until combined. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Into the same bowl as the cooled eggplant, add the rocket, spring onion and toasted pinenuts.

Pour the dressing over the top and mix carefully to combine. Add the tomato at the final moment so it doesn't break down too much. Season with a bit of extra pepper, if you like.

For the haloumi, heat a good drizzle of oil in a frying pan until hot.

Fry the haloumi slices for a couple of minutes each side, or until crisp and golden. Sprinkle each slice with a pinch of sumac for extra flavour.

Remove and briefly drain on paper towel.

To serve, place the salad on to 2 plates and arrange the fried haloumi around the eggplant.

Enjoy!

And to Drink....

Now that I've started to enjoy and develop an appreciation for chardonnay again, I seem to be drinking a lot of it.  Not such a bad thing!

This beautiful 2006 'Ithaca' chardonnay from Nepenthe in the Adelaide Hills is a cool climate chardonnay that retains so many beautiful fruity flavours, while still having some buttery oakiness and complexity.

Admittedly, we opened this wine to have with our roast pork belly the night before and had some left over. It also matched perfectly with the sweetness of the roasted capsicum dressing and the saltiness of the haloumi. The saltiness actually enhanced the citrus flavours in the wine. The toasted pine nuts also brought out the nuttiness from the oaking process.

What a beautiful match to a lovely salad.

If you didn't have a chardonnay, any other dry style of white wine would match perfectly too. Even a dry rose with plenty of red berry and plum flavours would be perfect, especially if the weather was warm.