These fantastic vegetarian wraps are a blatant steal from a friend (hi Janie!) and are a regular lunch option aboard Amelie Rose. Something about the fried halloumi really hits the spot – it’s the perfect umami flavour plus the satisfying chewy texture that makes it appeal to even the most dedicated meat aficionado and keeps them coming back for a third (or even fourth) helping. If you want to go vegan then we’ve found swapping out the halloumi for slices of falafel works really well too, and gluten-free wraps are now available from most supermarkets if you need to go that way.

What you’ll need:

• Wraps – Pretty much any tortilla-style wraps will do the job, the bigger the better (within reason!) Most people find that two of these will keep them going until dinner time, so plan for at least twice as many wraps as you have people to serve them to. Many supermarkets now have either corn or sweet potato based wraps if you need to shy away from gluten.
• Houmous – both the normal and low fat versions work just fine – and you may even try one of the flavoured ones though we haven’t experiemented with this yet. A standard supermarket tub (300g) will do 6-10 wraps depending on how sparingly you spread it.
• Halloumi – don’t bother with the low-fat version because you’ll end up having to add oil at the frying stage unless you want the pan and the cheese to get into a really close relationship. One standard sized supermarket pack (225g) will do 6-10 wraps depending on how heavily you load them and how thinly you slice the halloumi.
• Crunchy Salad – I’m sure that you could use a bag of “bistro-style” baby leaves for this and get away with it but what works best is a good crunchy Romaine or Baby Gem lettuce with grated carrot and red cabbage – plus all those colours make for healthy eats!
• Sweet Chilli Dipping Sauce – We go for the fairly mild Blue Dragon stuff (one bottle will do 50+ wraps btw) but you can step it up to insane heat or do away with the chilli altogether and just use a french dressing if you’d prefer.

Now do this:

Prep the Halloumi:

• Cut the halloumi into slices about 2 – 4mm thick – depending on how much you are trying to eke out this precious resource and how much you like your luncheon companions.
• Dry fry the halloumi slices until they colour up nicely and stop flopping about being difficult to separate from the pan and each other. (If you’re stuck with the low fat version you will need to add oil first or you’ll never get them unglued.)

Not done yet

Perfectly cooked!

• Whilst the halloumi is frying you can prep the other bits and bobs or even – if you have more workspace than our galley provides – assemble the wraps ready for the halloumi. We tend to fry up the halloumi in batches and store it in a bowl and then make the wraps one at a time.

Assemble the wraps:

• The filling needs to go across the centre of each wrap stopping about 1.5 inches from the ends – see the pictures below to get a feeling for it.
• The order of play is as follows; a heathly spread of houmous, a handful or two of salad, 3 or 4 bits of halloumi, drizzle over some chilli sauce.

Slap on some houmous

Add the salad

Then chuck on the halloumi and drizzle with chilli sauce

Wrap the wraps:

• I am aware that there are a number of methods for doing this but this way (see pics below) will give you a nice tight wrap that can be held in one hand and (usually) doesnt drip chilli sauce and houmous on your nice new musto sailing trousers.

Fold over one edge (or both edges if you want to make a fully sealed wrap for a packed lunch)

Then fold over the top part and use the edge to push the filling inward tightly

Roll the wrap tightly

Ready for eatin!

Now eat the wraps:

• If you want to have these as part of a packed lunch then fold both edges inwards when you wrap them up. Kept in a lunch box or individually wrapped in foil they’ll keep like this just as well as any sandwich.
• Enjoy! (And let me know how you get on in the comments below.)

Yum!