Feta and the brined white cheeses

The crumbly, salty, sharp white cheese of Greece, stored in brine — and the family of brined sheep’s, goat’s and cow’s milk cheeses across the Balkans, Turkey and the Levant that are the everyday table cheese from the Adriatic to the Euphrates.

Where it comes from

White cheese kept in brine is the ancient cheese of the eastern Mediterranean — Homer describes something like it — because salt water preserved sheep’s and goat’s milk cheese through a hot summer when nothing else would. Greece’s feta, made from sheep’s milk or a sheep-and-goat mix and aged at least two months in brine, is the best known and is now protected by name in the European Union; Bulgaria’s sirene, Turkey’s beyaz peynir, Romania’s telemea, the Levantine nabulsi and the Egyptian domiati are its relatives, differing in milk, salt and age.

It is a cheese for the table and for cooking both: crumbled over salads and beans, baked in filo for spanakopita and börek, fried in a pan (saganaki), grilled with honey and sesame, mashed with herbs into a dip, or baked whole with tomato and chilli. Its saltiness seasons the dish it goes into, and cooks in the region use it as much as a seasoning as a cheese. Cow’s milk ‘feta’ from Denmark and elsewhere is a different, milder, softer product.

Varieties

• Greek feta (PDO) — Sheep’s milk, or up to 30% goat; tangy, crumbly yet creamy, aged in brine. From barrel (varéli) or tin; barrel-aged is fuller.
• Bulgarian sirene — Sheep’s or cow’s milk; creamier and often tangier than feta. In shopska salad and banitsa pastry.
• Turkish beyaz peynir — Cow’s or sheep’s milk, in a range from soft to firm and mild to sharp; the breakfast cheese, with olives and bread.
• Nabulsi and akkawi — Levantine brined cheeses; nabulsi is boiled and flavoured with mahlab and nigella, and is the cheese of knafeh.
• Danish and cow’s milk ‘feta’ — Milder, softer, whiter; fine for salads, less character for cooking.
• Halloumi — Not brined in the same way but a cousin — Cypriot sheep and goat cheese that grills and fries without melting.

In the kitchen

Crumble it over a salad of tomato, cucumber, onion and olives with oregano and olive oil, and do not add salt until you have tasted. Bake it whole in a dish with tomatoes, chilli and oil until soft and spreadable. Mash with yoghurt, garlic and herbs for a dip. Fold into spinach and dill for spanakopita; mix with parsley and egg for a börek filling.

Fried in a hot pan with a dusting of flour it makes saganaki, served with lemon; grilled and drizzled with honey and sesame it is a Greek meze. Feta does not melt smoothly — it softens and holds — which is what makes it good in a pastry and poor in a sauce. Soak very salty feta in milk or water for an hour to soften the salt.

Choosing and keeping

Buy feta in its brine, from a barrel or a tin at a Greek or Middle Eastern shop where possible; it keeps for weeks refrigerated in the brine and dries out and sours quickly without it. Make a light brine (a tablespoon of salt per half litre) to store an opened block.

Sheep’s milk feta is creamier and more complex than cow’s; the label should say. Pre-crumbled feta is dry and salty. Halloumi keeps for months unopened in its brine.

Feta and the brined white cheeses is tagged on 48 dishes from 24 countries in the atlas. These notes are written from general knowledge and carry no per-fact citation — see About.