vegetarian of the week

Polenta breaded haloumi served with cous cous and eggplant creme

One night a week we try to eat a vegetarian dish.  More on that later...This dish has a lot of ingridients but it's fast to make.  When going vegetarian,  Haloumi is a good substitute for meat and it's easy to work with.  Today I breaded the haloumi in polenta to give it a crispy crust.  I use the big round  cous cous because i like the texture but you can use whatever cous cous you prefer.

COUS COUS MIX

4 dl cous cous

1/2 cauliflower

10 cherry tomatos

1 bunch baby spinach

1 bunch cilantro

3 scallions

1/2 pomegranite

1 pinch of red chili

1/2 red onion

HALOUMI

2 packages haloumi

1-2 dl polenta

EGGPLANT CREME

1 eggplant

5 gloves garlic

1 dl creme friache 

squeeze of lemon

1 pinc of grounded cumin

Start with the eggplant.  Place the whole eggplant and the garlic (with the skin on) on a tray in the oven, at 200 C for 25 minutes or until the eggplant is soft and soggy.  Skin the eggplant and then blend it with with the garlic lemon, cumin and creme fraiche, salt and pepper

Mean while, boil the cous cous and rinse in cold water, boil the cauliflower and rinse in cold water.  Chop the scallions, the cilantro, the spinach, the onion, the tomatos and the chili and place everything in a bowl.  Take out the pomegranite seeds and put them into the mix... an easy way to deseed a pomegranite is to cut the fruit in half, then hold one half in one hand while banging the closed end with a hard sppon as showed in the picture above.  Cut up the haloumi and bread it in the polenta (you can even use bread crumbs or panko or seasame seeds, etc.)  Sear in olive oil, takes about 1 minute on each side and then place in oven to keep warm.  Sear the cous cous mix in olive oil.  Done.