rissoles
I love 'em
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Going to try chilli marinated halloumi first time tonight, think it was you that recommended it earlier in this thread
Marinated overnight in garlic, fresh red chilli, Aleppo chilli flakes, oregano, sumac, olive oil and lemon juice bashed to mush in mortar and pestle
Going to re-use the marinade on some aubergine slices then griddle the aubergine and halloumi and have with a walnut, pomegranate molasses vinigarette type thing and couscous. Possibly some roasted tomatoes as well, not sure
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That sounds the absolute biz mate! What time should I be there? 
Halloumi is tough to actually marinate, youāre trying to coat rather than actually penetrate
Yes I know -
Keep your marinade and keep basting whilst under the grill.
The alternative is to coat the cheese in a spicy crumb which then retains the flavour but depends on what texture youāre after.
Anyway, sounds yummy.
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I agree - but I prick and pierce the halloumi with a skewer in order to try and get some flavour penetration
Didnāt know that- I thought it might be better than meat.
The aubergine will soak it up though Iād reckon?
undoubtedly
Must admit, when I do it, I cut the cheese up and leave it a day or two to marinate.
It will pick up flavour but only to an extent. Simple test, stick halloumi in a strongly coloured marinade for two days, then chop it in half and see how much of that colour has actually penetrated - Iāll bet itās fuck all.
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Given how much water there is in cheese (a good deal more than I realised) itās a bit surprising that marinades donāt soak in. I guess the fat/protein matrix just impedes the diffusion too well. A different solvent might be better but almost all of the things which dissolve fat are toxic, and the few that arenāt have tastes of their own. I wonder if a marinade based on glycerol might work better ? Or alcohol ? If youāre brave enough (read the MSDS first) then maybe ether would do the trick, but youād want to let as much as possible of it boil away after it had delivered its payload to the inside of the cheese. And whatever you do KEEP IT AWAY FROM ANY POSSIBLE SOURCE OF IGNITION. The stuff is prone to explosive combustion like nothing else on earth.
VB
Ffs, itās a pork thread, not a fucking chemistry lab 
Halloumiās cooked, which hardens it - presumably longer-chain proteins form, knitting it together more tightly. Despite numbnutsā assertions, itās marinated in mint during production and that certainly permeates the whole thing very effectively.
iirc, things like capsaicin and allicins from chilli and garlic both bind readily to proteins and are more soluble in oil than water, so may explain why an oily marinade seems to work wellā¦ Meanwhile, pigment perfusion is not terribly indicative of flavour, cos many of them are insolubleā¦
I thought heat tended to denature proteins?
(It was a long time ago that I last did GCSE Biology)
Anyway fuck the chemistry lesson Heston, itās tasty squeaky food
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denature =/= softer (e.g. cooking egg)
well, not always, it just means a change in the nature of the protein
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Squeaky likes cheese 
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You bāstard, I have just had fruit salad and a black coffee, this is what I wanted, but Ms ICHM is on a diet with me. Fuck.
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Remind me Jim, how is the low carb diet going?
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Did you run out of mushrooms?