I love to cook… Most days. But there are those hectic days when I’m exhausted by the time dinner rolls around, and I don’t want to come up with a meal plan. That’s when I reach for an all-in-one recipe that has the main and side. This Harissa Halloumi & Roasted Vegetable Wraps & Sweet Potato Wedges is exactly that. Whew, long name! But it promises a complete vegetarian meal in less than an hour, and it sounds all kinds of tasty. I’m looking forward to trying it!
Harissa halloumi & roasted vegetable wraps – harissa marinated halloumi cheese, roasted vegetable and houmous flatbreads with spiced sweet potato wedges.
The Ingredients
I love that the ingredients are divided according to which part of the recipe they’re used for. A quick pantry check and I found that I needed everything for this recipe.
Fortunately, none of the ingredients were difficult to find at my usual grocery store. The halloumi cheese was in the deli cheese section instead of the dairy display. Otherwise, everything was where I expected to find it. I even found spicy harissa on the International food aisle.
The Process
Having the ingredients list divided into sections made following the instructions pretty easy. Marinating the halloumi cheese in the spicy harissa was the first step. I tried my best to cut the halloumi into 12 pieces, but I only managed 8. Any thinner, and I was afraid the cheese would fall apart.
Once the halloumi was marinating, I sliced up the vegetables for the filling and tossed them in the oil and spices. Tossing the vegetables was the only change I made to the recipe. Instead of tossing them on the sheet pans, I used my largest mixing bowl to toss them in olive oil and spices. I find this method coats the vegetables more thoroughly and isn’t as messy.
Next, I cut the sweet potatoes into 8 wedges each and tossed them the same way I did the other vegetables. It felt weird not peeling them first, but the recipe explicitly said not to.
I mixed up the dipping sauce and fried the halloumi while the sweet potatoes and other vegetables finished roasting. This was my first time frying halloumi, and it didn’t turn out the way I imagined.
Halloumi has a high melting temperature, and the photos I’ve seen of it fried show a browned outside. Even though I preheated my grill pan, the cheese just didn’t brown. I think there was too much steam from the evaporating harissa to sear the halloumi. A little disappointing because I think it would have added some flavor, but the warmed cheese was still delish.
Once everything was done, I assembled a couple of wraps for dinner. I spread on some hummus, topped it with the roasted veg, some arugula, and the fried halloumi. Then. I wrapped it all in a sheet of parchment. A side of roasted sweet potato wedges and the dipping sauce finished the meal nicely!
Timing
Here’s how my time was spent on this recipe:
- 8 minutes to prep
- 25 minutes to roast the vegetables
- 7 minutes to prep the sweet potatoes and sauce (done while roasting veg)
- 25 minutes to roast the sweet potato wedges
- 5 minutes to finish roasting the vegetables
- 1 hour 3 minutes total
That was a bit longer than the 50 minutes listed. I’m not sure where the slowdown happened. Either way, I would like to try this recipe again and roast the vegetables with the sweet potatoes to speed things up. I have a feeling that would make the time closer to 45 minutes.