Watermelon and halloumi jenga
Ok so you saw it here first! A delicious jenga tower made up of large chunks of watermelon and halloumi! I could have easily just presented you this idea using watermelon and halloumi slices on a plate but that wouldn’t be as much fun right?
I’ve been wanting to do this combo since my daughter’s 1st birthday when I made her a watermelon jenga tower to smash! It was so much fun seeing her reaction when it was brought in front of her and then devouring the watermelon as well.
When in Cyprus
Watermelon in Cyprus is always served cold with halloumi slices to go with it. Easily enjoyed for breakfast, snack and after dinner treat. Imagine sitting outside on the veranda on a hot summer night and enjoying this refreshing fruit! That is pretty much what most of our night entailed while we were living there 🙂
Watermelon has a really sweet flavour that is then balanced with the saltiness of the halloumi. I usually cut a piece of watermelon and halloumi and eat them both at the same time. Combining fruit with cheese is very common practice, especially when there is a bottle of wine involved.
It’s like salty popcorn with chocolate… Sounds weird but it is soooo good! Pairing the sweet and juicy watermelon with the salty and chewy halloumi is definitively one of my favourite combinations (and no wine is needed in this case haha).
How to play Jenga
The official Jenga game is composed of 54 wooden blocks stacked carefully in groups of 3. The 18 levels are built in such a way that each alternating group of 3 is placed perpendicular to each other. The aim of the game is such that you remove one block at a time from any complete level and then you place the block you removed on the top. This process continues until the tower falls down. But in our case who would want to have all this watermelon and halloumi falling down?! Just eat it 🙂 🙂
Assembling the watermelon and halloumi Jenga
When putting the watermelon and halloumi pieces together it is important to work as fast as you can so that the watermelon doesn’t go too soggy. To help with that it is good to have a grill with a tray under it so you can rest the pieces you cut on it. That way the juices released from the watermelon can just drip down on the tray and the watermelon retains its crunchiness.
- ½ large watermelon about 5kg
- 2 x 250g halloumi blocks
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Cut the watermelon in 2cm thick slices along its length. Cut out a 9x9cm square from each slice and to make the process faster you can use one square prism as a template to continue cutting the rest of them.
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We were able to make 9 of these rectangular prisms. Place each prism on a grill on top of a tray so that the juices released are able to drip down and that way the watermelon does not get soggy.
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Then cut each of the 9 square prisms in 3 equal watermelon blocks (should be roughly 9x3x2cm) – we ended up with 27 watermelon blocks. Based on what size the watermelon pieces are in the end, cut out the same size halloumi blocks.
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Before assembling all the pieces you might want to trim the edges to make them as straight as possible, otherwise a rustic uneven Jenga is always cool too 🙂
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To assemble the watermelon and halloumi Jenga place 3 blocks of watermelon on a plate. Then add 3 more blocks on top but this time rotate them at a right angle to the bottom. Repeat the process until all the halloumi and watermelon pieces are used.
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Serve immediately otherwise the juices will continue running and building on the bottom, making the watermelon soggy.
Any extra pieces of watermelon or halloumi may be placed in the fridge to be consumed later.
The size of the Jenga may vary each time but what we put together was based on the size of the watermelon we used. Also pay attention to the longest side of the halloumi before cutting the watermelon so that the Jenga is as equal as possible. Some halloumi blocks are not as long as 9cm. But as I said already you can determine your own sizes when doing this.
