Chickpea, Haloumi and Pita Bread Salad

I'm going to take the concept of a fattoush salad, which is a Middle Eastern salad with Lebanese bread throughout it. I'm gonna change it up slightly by adding some pita bread and some halloumi. This is super delicious. The first thing we need to do is crisp up our pita bread and warm through our halloumi. So with these little pitas, I'm just going to break them up into smaller chunks. And when it's torn, I just think it looks so much better and it tastes better too because of the textures. So for the halloumi, I've got a big chunk of Greek-style halloumi. And again, you can chop it, but it just looks so good when it's mixed with a salad if torn up. So tear that up into little pieces. And the great thing about halloumi is after it's been baked in the oven, it still holds its shape, which is great for a salad. To this, a good glug of olive oil. So a good drizzle over the bread and the halloumi. About a tablespoon or so. A tiny bit of salt, not too much salt, because the halloumi is salty enough. It's just more for the bread. And then some spices. I have some allspice here, a little sprinkle. And my favourite dried herb, which is oregano. Now you want to get your hands in here and just give everything a nice toss so it's evenly coated. Now this just goes into the oven for about 15 minutes or until all of that pita bread is golden and crunchy and the halloumi has softened slightly and become golden too. Alright, while the halloumi and pitas are cooking in the oven, let's get on to a very quick dressing. So in a bowl, a little bit of garlic. I like some honey for this because as we know, honey and halloumi, oh, the best combination, along with lemon. So I'm going to use a little of the zest and we need the acidity of the juice. So we'll use about half of this lemon because it is quite large and quite juicy. So we'll just cut that in half. And I'll use my nifty juicer just to get as much juice out as possible. Look at that, so juicy. You could also use some vinegar here if you didn't have a lemon on standby. And just to give it a bit of warmth and heat, I like the addition of some chilli. Now this is just one long red chilli. I've taken the seeds out so it's not too, too hot. And what I like to do is just cut them into strips and then we'll just finely chop it. You could substitute this long chilli for just some dried chilli. It works a treat too. OK, that can go into the bowl. And to tie everything together, we need some salt and a good glug of extra virgin olive oil. OK. Give that a quick stir. Just really incorporate that honey. OK, let's talk about chickpeas. Now, this recipe, you can absolutely use canned chickpeas. But if you want to have a go at cooking your own chickpeas, the flavour is just far, far greater. You get a creamier result. So what you do is get your dried chickpeas, which are inexpensive, and you just soak them overnight in some water. You'll see they expand slightly. Drain that water. Pop them into a pot with lots of new fresh water, no salt. And you want to cook them for an hour and a half to two hours or until they become super tender. And you can see they swell up. When you can just grab them and just break them in your hand like that... See how creamy they are? Mmm. They're just the best thing ever. These are still warm, so this is going to be a warm salad. But you can make this a few days ahead of time and just pop them in the fridge. Alright, I'm going to add them to my bowl. Before I do that, you never want to season your chickpeas while you cook them because they'll become tough and it'll take forever to cook. So just leave the seasoning to the end. Give that a stir through. And when I am preserving these in the fridge, I do leave them in the water. So now we can just drain them. And because they're still nice and warm, they're going to absorb all that lovely dressing. So I'm going to add about three-quarters of a cup to a cup, depending on how much salad you're making. But it is the base of it, so you can be quite generous with it. Great. OK. For another pop of sweetness, I've got some dates here. I've just finely chopped them. They can go in. And some spring onions. I'm just going to use the light part and the white part. Just cutting them into 1cm rounds. Pop that in. And then some herbs. I like the combination of mint and parsley. I'm just going to pick off the leaves, roughly chop it, and then it goes straight into the bowl. And all we need to do now is wait for the halloumi and pita to finish cooking. And while they're still warm, we're going to toss it into our bowl. It's going to be great. It smells so good in here because of the oregano and allspice that we've used on the pita and halloumi. And you can see the pita's crunchy. And look at this sticky, crunchy halloumi. This is the best thing ever. And the hard part is trying not to eat all of this before it gets to the salad. Mmm. Because it's so good. So we're going to pop this into the salad. And what I like to do is bring it out of the oven and just let it sit for about 5 to 10 minutes because by doing that, the halloumi is going to go even crunchier. And we're going to toss everything together in that lovely dressing. And you can see why a little bit of chilli is a nice idea. That pop of red is quite beautiful. OK. I'm going to pour this onto a presentation platter. Let's just pour that on. Just get a bit of height there. I'll tidy that up slightly. And that is a gorgeous, really fun salad that actually tastes good. Salads don't have to be boring. They can be really tasty. Just always remember about the balance. So lots of lemon juice and salt and honey and then crunch. And we're going to get lots of crunch in this because we've got yummy halloumi and pita. Let's have another piece of that halloumi. Mmm. It's very good.