Feta cheese

Feta is often overlooked as a cheese. But with its relatively low fat content and range of flavor from mild to forceful, it's worth paying it some attention. True feta cheese, low-fat and healthy, is a far cry from the plastic-packaged sour, salty and nose-curling packaged cheese from supermarket dairy aisles. Whole Foods is an exception.

Feta is the prime traditional cheese of Greece, a curd cheese made from goats' or sheep's milk or a mix of the two, salted and cured and stored in brine. It comes to the store in large rectangular cans not unlike olive oil cans. Although Greece makes other cheeses like kefalotiri and graviera, it's feta that's used to fill tyropita, the cheese pie, spanakopita, the spinach pie, and in the cheese sauce on moussaka and pastitzio. It's the only acceptable cheese in a horiatiki salata - Greek salad (see below) - and makes a great stuffing for roast lamb.  

The more aged it is, the more pungent the flavor. It can also be very salty. A young feta is quite mild and almost gelatinous in texture. To keep feta fresh, store it in the fridge in water which should be changed daily.

France, Bulgaria and Denmark also made feta-like cheese, as do countries surrounding Greece and others in the Middle East. But following a protracted legal battle with Denmark, the EU allowed Greece a Protected Designation of Origin, which means any other country making feta must now call it "Greek-style cheese", not feta.

Whether it comes from Greece, Bulgaria, or France, it's a holiday in a taste. Break it into cubes, sprinkle it with a grind of pepper and a generous pinch of oregano (preferably wild mountain picked), drizzle it with fruity olive oil, and tuck in. The "Greek-style cheese" from France tends to be mild, while that of Bulgaria runs the range from mild to pungent. Always ask for a taste before you buy. It's readily available from Middle East markets around the area.

Buy feta in a Middle East market, or at the Dupont Circle Farmers' Market on Sunday mornings or other area farmers' markets. If feta isn't sold in a carton with its own brine, do as for mozzarella and drain off the water daily and replace with fresh to store.

Feta makes such a wonderful (low calorie if you are calculating) Greek salad in summer, broken up and scattered among quarters of heirloom tomato, peeled and thick-sliced cucumber, thin-sliced onion, a handful of black olives, salt, a generous grind of pepper and a good glug of olive oil. No vinegar is needed if you're going for authenticity.

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