Tomato Pasta #16 | Hot Hot Hot
Three (3) recipes I'm craving right now
In a slight tweak to to the format of the ‘Tomato Pasta’ column, this month’s edition (which is what you are reading right now) includes three recipes not one.
No particular reason — I suppose I was just pondering dishes that require spending relatively little time in the kitchen, landed on a trio, but was too hot and fatigued to narrow them down.
First up, honeyed halloumi with apricot and tomato fregola. This is a real winner of a dish — the fregola element effectively being a pasta salad, heavily laden with apricots, tomatoes, olives, sweet spices and fresh herbs. You can assemble this part whenever works best for you, serving it hot, tepid or cold. Then, when ready to eat, you just fry-up some halloumi, lash it with honey, a squeeze of lemon and a dusting of bashed fennel seeds, and then speedily sit down and enjoy it (before that cheese becomes squeaky). I’m confident it’ll be a crowd pleaser.
Paid subscribers will then also find a recipe for orange and scotch bonnet paletas (i.e. iced lollies). The combination might seem to some like a rogue idea, but the scotch bonnets are infused into orange juice not masochistically, rather because their fruity flavour is uniquely intoxicating and pairs especially well with sweet and slightly sour orange. Yes, the longer you infuse them, the more likely there’ll also be a chilli tickle on top (and maybe this moves this away from being family friendly, per the intent of the column?). But it’s a pleasantly intriguing tickle, and actually excellent during a heatwave.
Finally, there’s cider vinegar-roasted pork belly with sour apricots and shallots. Yum.
If you’re thinking “why would you have a roast on a hot day, are you mad?”, I completely agree with you. In fact, to my mind between May to September the concept of the traditional British roast lunch/dinner should be parked. That doesn’t, however, mean roasted meat is out: stick a joint in the oven and walk away. Later on, once the meat is cooked and well rested, serve the very succulent centrepiece a notch above room temperature, with leaves and salads alongside, maybe some baby potatoes or beans from a jar/grains/grainy pasta (the aforementioned fregola salad would work well…)
This week’s recipes
Are adapted from my cookbook Crave. If you’re one of the few who have it, I hope seeing them repackaged here is a timely prompt. If not, well, try before you buy?
Honeyed halloumi with apricot and tomato fregola
Plenty going on here, although sweet and gently perfumed apricots and chunks of tomatoes do a lot of the lifting work (keep them similar to the quartered apricots — I think this salad works well when rustic rather than fine and bitty). Both those ingredients are elevated by fragrant fennel seeds and salty kalamata olives, plus copious amounts of parsley and mint. Feel free to go even bigger on the herbs than I have suggested, or add tarragon and/or dill to the mix as well; it should be a really vibrant base for your meal and need little else, other than the glazed halloumi (although you could add some nice green leaves on the side — a lemony dressing would be good).
Serves 4
300g (10½oz) fregola (alternatively, giant couscous, moghrabieh or maftoul)
300g (10½oz) large, fleshy tomatoes, cut into rough chunks
75g (2½oz) Kalamata olives, pit in
300g (10½oz) apricots, pitted and quartered
Leaves picked from 30g (1oz) mint, finely chopped
Leaves picked from 30g (1oz) flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped
1 tbsp fennel seeds
5 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
1–2 tbsp light olive oil
2 x 200–250g (7–9oz) blocks halloumi, cut into 1–1.5cm (½in) strips
1 tbsp honey
Juice ½ lemon
Flaky sea salt
Bring a large pan of well-salted water to the boil and cook the fregola according to the packet instructions (usually around 10 minutes). When al dente, drain through a sieve (strainer) and leave briefly under cold-running water to wash away some starch, and to cool to slightly above room temperature.
Add the tomato chunks to a mixing bowl and season with lots of flaky salt. Bash the olives with the base of a mug, remove the pits, roughly chop the flesh and add to the bowl. Add the apricots along with the fresh herbs. Lightly toast the fennel seeds in a dry pan until aromatic, grind to a rough powder (i.e. not quite a dust) and sprinkle three-quarters of it over the bowl. Add the extra virgin olive oil and vinegar, and mix well before folding in the fregola. Taste and add more extra virgin olive oil, vinegar, salt or herbs if needed.
Warm one to two tablespoons of light olive oil in a large heavy-bottomed frying pan (skillet) over a medium heat (if necessary, use two pans or cook in two batches, rather than overcrowd the pan), then fry the halloumi pieces for around 2 minutes without touching them, flipping only when a golden crust has formed. Colour on this side for 1 minute, then dot the honey in the gaps between the pieces and let that bubble in the pan and caramelize under the cheese for 30 seconds.
Remove the halloumi pan from the heat, squeeze the lemon juice in, then transfer to a warm plate, crustiest side up, scraping all the pan juices on top and sprinkling the remaining fennel seeds over too. Eat immediately alongside generous servings of the apricot fregola.
Orange and Scotch Bonnet Paletas
Scotch bonnet chilli peppers have a distinctive and quite intoxicating fruity scent that pairs incredibly well orange. It just so happens that they also pack an almighty yet addictive punch.
This idea for orange and scotch bonnet paletas – of the agua fresca style – is one for people who enjoy flavour pairings, but also the strangely enjoyable sensation of warming your tongue and tummy, despite the fact you’re sucking on ice.