To celebrate their range of spicy sauces, Heinz hosted a cook-off for me and a bunch of other foodie people. You could use sweet chilli, jerk BBQ, hot pepper, sriracha, or peri peri (you can see the sauces here). Surprisingly, I didn’t opt for a potato recipe.

I came up with jerk halloumi kebabs. I tried all the sauces but the sweet tone of scotch bonnets worked really well with salty, squeaky halloumi. Comforting, nutty cauliflower cous cous went with it and to soak up all that fire some cooling tzatziki-style yoghurt.

Hosted at L’atelier des Chefs‎, there was about 12 of us cooking different dishes. And how different they were! From spiced lamb to crab cakes, from sausage stews to stuffed peppers… there was such variety.

And all of this was to be judged by Celebrity Masterchef winner Lisa Faulkner! No pressure then. I toiled on and produced the dish, and I was pretty happy with it. It came our exactly as I planned. And here I am being judged!

She was very complimentary and loved the kebabs, but fair in that the cauliflower was a little on the plain side. In hindsight, some soaked, spiced apricots or similar running through it would have pepped it up a little.

And with feedback like that it was clear I wasn’t going to win. I was however thrilled that an old chum of mine May won, with her brilliant spicy chilli crab dish. Served on a large platter, diners pulled bit of crab off and chewed noisily at the shells. It was a real crowd-pleaser and a deserved winner.

I still like my dish and will be cooking it often as it’s an easy midweek dinner. The recipe’s below.

Thanks to Heinz for a fun night, and providing me spicy sauces to play with!

jerk halloumi kebabs with cauliflower cous cous

Gary @ BigSpud

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Ingredients

  

For the kebabs:

• 500 g Halloumi
• 1 red pepper
• 1 red onion
• Heinz Jerk BBQ Sauce
• 1 clove garlic

For the cous cous:

• 1 large cauliflower
• 50 g mixed seeds (pumpkin, sesame etc)
• 2 tablespoons dried onions
• 300 ml natural yoghurt
• 1/2 cucumber

For the yoghurt dressing:

• Juice of half a lemon

Instructions

 

• First the kebab prep: peel and dice the onion, dice the halloumi, and dice the pepper. Toss in plenty of Jerk sauce and set aside to marinate.
• Preheat the grill to high, and a saucepan over a medium heat.
• Skewer the cheese and veg. Pop under the grill and turn occasionally, brushing with more sauce.
• Grate the cauliflower. Dry fry the seeds until golden and tip out to one side. Add a splash of oil to the pan and fry the crushed garlic for 30 seconds, then add the cauliflower.
• While the cauliflower fries, grate the cucumber and squeeze out the excess water. Mix with the yoghurt and lemon juice and season to taste.
• When the cauliflower is cooked add the seeds and dried onion's.
• Serve the cous cous with two kebabs and dress with the yoghurt sauce.