Grilling halloumi

Our favorite co-op recently tweeted a message about grilling halloumi cheese and I soon found myself at their cheese counter listening to another shopper talking to the monger about the same tweet that lured me there. Heck of a tweet.

Halloumi is the Greek's answer to Wisconsin cheese curds. While curds will always trump every other squeaky cheese in the world, it is fun to fry up a slab of the good hardy Greek stuff especially during the cool winter months when we eat it with olives and bread. Halloumi is dense and has a high melting point which makes it perfect for the fryer, the oven, or (as I learned last week) the grill.

I sliced the halloumi into 1 1/2 inch thick squares and grilled over direct heat, turning for grill marks that never appeared, until a nice brown crust formed. We ate it with a sort of reinterpreted Salad Niçoise (a la Minnesota!); grilled green beans and mushrooms, and salmon topped with a homemade tartar sauce (mayo, Dijon, lemon juice, olive oil, and chopped dill pickles), boiled new potatoes tossed in vinegar and lots of dill from the garden, and good briny olives.