Spinach Waffles with Hummus and Avocado

Take the flours first. Plain flour alone gives you a soft, slightly bland crumb — fine, but nothing to it. Wholemeal brings bran, which is basically tiny blades that cut the gluten strands shorter as they form. That's useful here: a waffle doesn't want to be chewy and elastic like good bread, it wants a bit of crumble so it shatters rather than stretches when you bite it. If you've only got plain flour in the cupboard, use it all — you lose a little nuttiness and bite, you don't lose the dish. Some people think wholemeal is "healthier" and plain is "cheating" — no, it's just rougher. Neither is more virtuous in a waffle iron.

The spinach: fresh or frozen both work, and frozen is arguably less fuss since it's already wilted and watery — you're blending it raw either way, so there's no texture to preserve. What you're buying with spinach is colour and a very mild vegetal edge, not nutrition theatre. If spinach isn't in the fridge, any soft leaf that purées smooth — rocket, even a handful of parsley — will tint the batter without changing the mechanics of it.

Eggs and milk aren't just "wet ingredients" — eggs are the structure once heat hits them, the protein that sets and holds the waffle's shape so it doesn't collapse the moment it leaves the iron. Milk's fat and sugar are what let the outside brown rather than just dry out; water alone browns reluctantly. Any milk with roughly that fat content does the same job — this isn't a dish where oat milk versus whole milk will make or break you, just expect a slightly paler crust from a leaner one.

For the hummus, tahini is sesame's version of nut butter — it's there for fat and a bitter-savoury backbone that plain chickpeas don't have on their own. Blending it with lemon juice first, before anything else goes in, isn't fussiness: tahini seizes and goes grainy when it meets acid cold, same way chocolate seizes with water, and whisking it loose with the lemon first gets past that so the whole hummus stays silky instead of stiff and sandy. The ice cube at the end is the same logic restaurants use for mayonnaise — cold water emulsifies in more smoothly than tap-warm water, keeping the hummus glossy rather than split and oily on top.

Frying the halloumi needs a dry pan and real patience before you flip — the squeak and the golden crust only arrive once enough surface water has cooked off that the cheese can actually brown instead of just steam. Move it too soon and it tears and sticks; that's not the cheese being difficult, that's the crust not being formed yet. And the rye crumbs with fennel and butter are standing in for croutons — stale rye bread used to be something you had no choice but to use up, not a trendy garnish, and frying it in butter with fennel seeds is just turning a cost-saving habit into a texture you'd now bother to make on purpose.