Halloumi and Beef Carpaccio Salad with Crisp-Fried Capers

Halloumi & Beef Carpaccio Salad with Crisp-Fried Capers

There are two things my teenage sons adore: halloumi cheese and beef fillet. They are their mother's sons, they are, because I too could eat both every day, with abandon, and for breakfast if necessary. But times are tight, and we don't have that sort of budget, so here's a simple recipe that uses a modest amount of both these wonderful ingredients, stretching them into a filling salad with lots of fresh green leaves, and - for those of you not on a low-carb regime - crusty bread on the side.

The first time I made this salad (and photographed it) I coated the outside of the halloumi with black pepper. The second time, I peppered the beef, but you can do either, or leave the pepper out altogether.

To avoid the halloumi turning limp or leathery, it needs to be fried at the very last minute. Please see this post for tips about buying and frying halloumi, which is a temperamental cheese.

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Halloumi and Carpaccio Salad with Fried Capers

600 g beef fillet
freshly milled black pepper
4 Tbsp (60 ml) olive oil or sunflower oil
40 capers, drained of their brine
fresh rocket, or similar green leaves; enough for six
one 300 g block of halloumi cheese, patted dry and cut into large cubes
1 Tbsp (15 ml) cornflour [cornstarch]

For the dressing:
4 Tbsp (60 ml) freshly squeezed lemon juice
6 Tbsp (75 ml) extra virgin olive oil, or a mixture of olive oil and light vegetable oil
1 tsp (5 ml) Dijon mustard
salt and freshly milled black pepper
a pinch of caster sugar

Trim the beef fillet, cutting away the silver membrane. Rub a little olive oil over the surface of the meat. Grind plenty of black pepper onto a chopping board, and roll the fillet back and forth over the pepper, so all sides are well coated. Heat 2 tablespoons (30 ml) of the oil in a frying pan. When the oil is very hot, but not quite smoking, add the fillet and brown it quickly on all sides. This should take just a few minutes, and the beef should remain quite raw on the inside. Remove the beef from the pan and set aside to cool.

Now make the dressing: combine all the ingredients in a small jug and whisk well. Don't add too much salt, as the halloumi cheese is quite salty in its own right.

Wipe out the frying pan with a piece of kitchen paper and add the remaining two tablespoons of oil. Pat the capers quite dry. When the oil is hot, add the capers and fry for a minute or so, or until they open into crisp little flowers. Fish them out with a slotted spoon and drain on a piece of kitchen paper.

Arrange the salad leaves on a large platter. Finely slice the beef fillet into slim leaves or strips, and arrange them over the salad. (It isn't easy to produce wafer-thin slices, but do your best with a very sharp knife. Or, flatten them between two pieces of clingfilm using a rolling pin. Alternatively, you can place the beef in the freezer for half an hour, which will make it easier to slice.)

Just before you're going to serve the salad, lightly dust the halloumi cubes with cornflour. Reheat the oil in a pan and, when it is hot, fry the cheese cubes, in batches, until golden brown and crusty. You may need to add more oil as you go along. (For tips on frying halloumi cheese, click here)

Drain the cubes on kitchen paper and scatter them over the top of the salad, along with the fried capers. Pour the dressing over the salad, or pass it round in a separate jug.

Serve with plenty of bread.

Serves 6

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Salad of Warm New Potatoes, Smoked Trout, Celeriac and Watercress

Celeriac is one of those veggies I don't see often on supermarket shelves, and when I do see one I fall on it like a starving wolf.  It's particularly delicious raw, and is lovely in salads. I made this salad today using the beautiful piece of smoked trout from Harty's that I bought yesterday at the Cape Town Food and Wine Show, and what a winning combination: the smoked trout is beautifully offset by the earthy crunch of celeriac matchsticks tossed in  in a remoulade-style dressing of crème fraîche, lemon and a little horseradish.

If you can't find watercress - in my opinion a hugely underrated salad ingredient - use any small green leaf, but avoid rocket, which will overpower the delicate flavour of the trout.

Salad of Warm New Potatoes, Smoked Trout, Celeriac and Watercress
1 kg new potatoes
a big (grapefruit-sized) bulb of celeriac
2 Tbsp (30 ml) olive oil
4 spring onions, finely sliced
2 fillets of smoked trout
a bunch of watercress
salt and milled black pepper

For the dressing:
juice of a lemon
finely grated zest of half a lemon
1 Tbsp (15 ml) finely chopped fresh dill
½ cup (125 ml) crème fraîche
1 tsp (5 ml) creamed horseradish [optional]

Boil the potatoes in plenty of salted water for about 15 minutes, or until they are just tender. In the meantime, make the dressing. Put all the dressing ingredients in a large bowl and whisk lightly until combined. Season with salt and pepper. Peel the celeriac (use a knife to cut off any knobbly bits, and then a potato peeler to remove the rest of the skin). Cut vertically into thin discs (this is easiest using a mandolin). Now stack the discs in a pile, six at a time, and cut into matchsticks. Add the celeriac to the bowl (do so immediately, to prevent it from browning) containing the dressing, and toss well to combine.

Drain the potatoes and cut them in half. Put them back in the pan, add the olive oil, season with salt and pepper and toss well. Arrange the warm potatoes, in a circle, in a large flat platter. Sprinkle with the spring onions. Tip the dressed celeriac into the middle of the salad platter. Pull the smoked trout into chevron-shaped pieces or big shreds and pile on top of the celeriac. Tuck sprigs of watercress all the way round the the edge of the potatoes. Serve immediately. Note: don't leave the celeriac strips to languish in their dressing for more than about 30 minutes, or they will lose their snappy celery taste.

Serves 6.


Like this? Try my Roast Beef Fillet with Creamy Celeriac and Horseradish Cream Salad. Print Friendly

Pretty Little Individual Tuna Salads for Children

I'm trying to convince my daughter that a fresh, crunchy salad can be a meal on its own, and that crisp things are exceedingly delicious and well worth eating. It's not that Elinor is averse to salady stuff: like many kids, she happily eats lettuce, cucumber, cherry tomatoes and carrot sticks. But she pales at the sight of a huge platter of salad, and grudgingly eats just a little. Perhaps the problem is that an overflowing bowl of salad is just too intimidating for a 10-year-old child.

Plate by David Walters

Recently, having lunch at Café Bon Bon in Franschhoek, I was served a little leafy salad encircled by a cucumber slice, and it looked so pretty that I thought I'd use the same trick with a protein-packed tuna salad. (Look, I normally wouldn't be seen dead stacking food in a tower, but I reckon this presentation might just get Ellie to chow down.)  We'll see when she gets home from school.

You will need one of those cheffy food rings to form this salad: if you don't have one (and why should you, indeed?) take the bottom off the tuna tin you've just opened, and use that as a ring.

Pretty Little Individual Tuna Salads for Children

For four salads: 
2 large free-range eggs
1 English cucumber
iceberg or any other crispy lettuce, torn into small pieces
a handful of cherry tomatoes, halved
a can of tuna, drained of its oil
8 calamata olives, stoned and halved
75 g feta cheese
chives, finely snipped

For the dressing:
4 Tbsp (60 ml) olive oil
the juice of a lemon
a pinch of salt
1 tsp (5 ml) honey

First make the dressing: whisk all the ingredients together and set aside. Slide the eggs into gently boiling water and cook for 9 minutes. Remove the pot from the heat and set it under a trickling cold tap for 3 minutes. Rinse the cucumber and cut a 5mm horizontal slice off the long side to expose the flesh. Using a mandolin or sharp knife, cut the cucumber into horizontal slices, each about 1-2 mm thick. Place a metal ring (or similar) on a small plate and firmly press the cucumber slice around the inside to form a circle (you may need to use two overlapping slices, depending on the length of your cucumber). Cut any left-over slices into matchstick-sized pieces. Fill the cucumber ring with a mixture of lettuce, cucumber sticks, tomatoes, tuna, olives and feta. Now gently slide the food ring up and off. Repeat with the other three salads. Peel and quarter the eggs. Top the salads with the warm egg quarters and a scattering of snipped chives. Trickle the dressing over the top of each salad. Serve immediately.

Makes 4 salads. Print Friendly

Crunchy Quinoa Salad with Beetroot and Feta

Anyone remember tabbouleh? This crunchy Lebanese salad, made with bulgur (or cracked wheat) , mint, parsley, tomatoes and spring onions, was a huge hit among health-conscious suburbanites during the eighties, but hardly anyone seems to make it nowadays. I suspect that the reason why it’s fallen out of favour is because it was so rough and filling (and more so when when washed down with few beers) that you ended up spending the entire night craftily flapping the duvet as you deflated in the dark.

I was feeling a bit nostalgic about my mom's tabbouleh, however, so I devised a new version, similar to the original but made with quinoa. This ancient South American staple is becoming increasingly popular among lentil-heads because of its unusually high protein content, its bouquet of healthy amino acids, and its romantic spiritual history*. It’s similar to bulgur, but lighter, fluffier and tastier - and I can assure you it’s lot less aggressive on the farting and bloating front.

What makes this salad so tasty is its abundance of chopped fresh herbs. Leave out the coriander if you must, but the mint and parsley are essential. Ask your local health shop for quinoa, or, if you live in Joeys, get it at Thrupps.

Crunchy Quinoa Salad with Beetroot and Feta

For the salad:
3-4 young beetroot, washed, topped and tailed (if you don't like beetroot, use finely sliced baby red cabbage, or grated radishes)
a lick of olive oil
1 cup quinoa
2 cups water
1 tsp (5 ml) salt
½ cucumber, finely diced
2 plump, ripe tomatoes, diced
3 spring onions, finely sliced
1 cup (250 ml) finely chopped parsley
¾ cup (190 ml) finely chopped mint
¾ cup (190 ml) finely chopped fresh coriander
salt and milled black pepper
1 handful shelled pumpkin seeds (optional)
2 disks feta cheese, crumbled

For the dressing:
1 cup all-purpose cooking elixir**
Juice of one fat lemon
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
½ tsp cayenne pepper (optional)

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Put the the beetroot on a large piece of tin foil, add a dribble of oive oil and a grinding of salt and pepper, and toss well to coat. Wrap into a loose parcel, place in the oven and bake until tender right through. (This can take between an hour and three, depending on the size and age of the beetroot). Remove, allow to cool slightly and slice into slim wedges. Put the dried quinoa into a sieve and rinse well under cold running water. Now put the quinoa, water and salt into a saucepan, set over a high flame and bring to the boil. Cook for 15-20 minutes, or until the quinoa is fluffy and tender. While it’s cooking, combine the cucumber, tomatoes, spring onion and chopped herbs in a salad bowl. Drain the quinoa in a sieve and allow to cool for five minutes. Whisk together the dressing ingredients. Now tip the warm quinoa into the salad bowl, pour over all but 2 tablespoons of the dressing and toss well to combine. Season with salt and pepper. Top with the beetroot slices, crumbled feta and pumpkin seeds. Shake the remaining dressing over the top of the salad so everything looks glossy. Allow to stand for 30 minutes to allow the flavours to develop. Serve at room temperature with hot pita bread.

Serves 6.

** If you haven’t made all-purpose cooking elixir, use the following dressing:

3 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
1/3 cup good olive oil
1/3 cup sunflower oil (or other flavourless oil)
1/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 tsp Dijon or seed mustard
2 tsp tahina (optional)

* Wikipedia says: 'The Incas, who held the crop to be sacred, referred to quinoa as "chisaya mama" or "mother of all grains", and it was the Inca emperor who would traditionally sow the first seeds of the season using 'golden implements'. During the European conquest of South America quinoa was scorned by the Spanish colonists as "food for Indians", and even actively suppressed, due to its status within indigenous non-Christian ceremonies.' Print Friendly