It is on the face of it absurd that heating ice turns it into water. You’re trying to tell me that the iron-hard crystalline scourge of hubris-laden passenger liners, a formidable foe even for Vladimir Putin’s fleet of nuclear-powered icebreakers, can be rendered supine, malleable and flowing by the application of just a small amount of heat? The idea would be absurd were it not an empirical fact. The transition is yet more striking given water’s higher density – an ice cube gets smaller even as it becomes less solid. The water-ice transition is surpassed in wonder by perhaps just two physical phenomena. The first is superconductivity (especially in materials like bismuth), and the second is the transition to incredible deliciousness upon cooking halloumi.

Uncooked, halloumi is a fairly horrible cheese – a floppy fetalike, shockingly salty, watery, rubbery, mild and unpleasant. When cooked, though, halloumi becomes mindbogglingly delicious. Upon the first bite of some piping-hot fried halloumi I become reduced to a primal beast, all higher parts of the cerebral cortex shutting down, overwhelmed by the frightening intensity of the urge to consume as much of this cheese as quickly as I can.

Halloumi is a firm white cheese originating in Cyprus. It lacks a rind and is packaged soaked in salt water. This halloumi under review contains goat, sheep and cow milk; upmarket versions typically banish the bovine element. Eaten raw, the taste is overwhelmingly briney, the texture curiously squeaky, and the experience rather unenjoyable. Halloumi is a wonder of physics thanks to its high melting point: while most cheeses little enjoy even scant seconds in the frying pan, halloumi lives to be pan-fried or grilled. While it’s technically legal to consume halloumi raw, this is almost always a tragic mistake. Halloumi simply must be cooked, and when cooked it becomes an artwork of unsurpassed beauty: the Mona Lisa of milk, the Shakespeare of the sheep-goat-cow-friable-cheeses canon.

Cooking halloumi is straightforward: heat a small amount of olive oil into a pan, slice the halloumi block into approx. 0.8 cm thick slices, put the slices in the pan, and fry on a medium heat. Initially the halloumi will sizzle happily as it gives up its water; once the water has largely evaporated, which will take around 4 minutes; turn the slices, watching for a lavish golden-brown colour to develop on the underside. This will happen quite quickly once the liquid has gone; don’t leave it in too long, or the halloumi will quickly burn and become too crunchy. Err on the side of caution; undercooked halloumi will be a little chewy, but still delicious. The ideal halloumi should be salty, soft, slightly squeaky, lightly golden-brown and searingly hot.

Halloumi can be used as a meat substitute – it is quite like a deliciously salty chicken – or sprinkled on salads. We tend to eat it with bread and a rocket salad. In practice, though, we just eat the halloumi first, all in one go, then realise – as one waking from a vivid dream – that other foods exist on our plate and we may as well engage with those too. Halloumi is also fantastic on barbeques, and can be grilled instead of fried (though it’s quite easy to burn it that way and that adds fewer calories of oil, which seems problematic).

The UK is, by a huge margin, the largest importer of halloumi worldwide, and I am proud to be a small part of this heroic national triumph (though it’s the Swedish that boast the truly world-beating per-capita consumption). Halloumi is often touted as a tasty vegetarian choice, or perhaps some sort of health food. This is not an angle I am always totally convinced by as I ladle oil-dripping slices of this cheese directly from the pan into my maw, wincing at the burns but ploughing on regardless. Spinning or marketing this cheese diminishes it; it stands on this own near the pinnacle of the tastiness pantheon.

This particular halloumi presents a challenge to review. Eating it was mind-blowingly amazing; then again, it’s clear that as halloumi it’s not actually that great. I don’t exactly shy away from foods that elevate my blood pressure into the stratosphere at the pace of a short-squeezed Gamestop share – in fact I actively seek them out – but this halloumi is almost too salty. For the first couple of minutes out of the pan, while burningly hot and viscerally satisfying, it is truly outstanding, but after cooling for just a couple of minutes, it becomes rubbery and dry at an unnusual pace. While the price of these cheese is pretty appealing given its deliciousness, I feel better versions of this cheese are available, at a comparable price point, in comparable supermarkets.

That said, this experience was very delicious. I rate this particular cheese 8 out of 10; I am confident better halloumi would score higher.

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