Homemade chèvre

If someone put a gun to my head and told me to pick between savory and sweet, I would definitely go for savory. No second thoughts. There are so many options with savory food, you can make anything your heart desires, from fish and meat to pasta and every kind of salad imaginable. You can be freer, you can improvise, cook on a whim, not worry about grams and egg sizes and baking pan dimensions.

I could never live without my favorite savory dishes but I can live without sweets, well, at least for a day or two. There is something you can make though, that with the right combination, can offer you the best of both worlds. Something that can be used both in savory and sweet dishes. That is of course chèvre aka goat’s cheese. [Chèvre means goat in French]

The tart flavor of goat milk is what makes this cheese unique and the tang is what makes it pair so well with spinach and beef but also with honey and fruits.

Soft, crumbly, moist goat’s cheese is so easy to make at home that it’s crazy not to try it. The freshness, the aroma, especially when still warm, is incomparable to the mass-produced goat’s cheeses that you find at your local supermarket.

In my humble opinion, chèvre is far better tasting than ricotta or similar soft cow’s milk cheeses as it is more complex, creamy and rich due to the fact that goat’s milk has more fat than cow’s milk. And when you are lucky enough to find goat’s buttermilk and add it to the mix, it gives the cheese even more depth of flavor.

I have made chèvre many times and it always disappears from the fridge in a matter of hours. We like to smear it onto freshly toasted baguette slices or homemade barley bread drizzled with Greek extra virgin olive oil. It’s a snack that can only be surpassed by juicy tomatoes on sourdough but let’s not go there yet.

As I stated in the beginning of this post, this cheese is versatile in every sense of the word. You can add it to spanakopita or tyropita along with some good Greek feta, to this tartine, or perhaps this smoked trout and lentil salad. Crumbling it on top of pizza is an excellent idea, but so is adding it in a sweet tart with pistachios and honey. You can add some herbs like rosemary or thyme to your freshly made, supple cheese and serve it alongside crostini or grissini, or add it to an omelette which will most probably equal to the simplest, tastiest lunch you’ve had in months.

It’s just a matter of waiting; waiting for the whey to drip out, waiting for the cheese to dry. You will have to be patient, but in the end you will be rewarded with the clean, tangy taste of fresh, homemade chèvre.

Homemade Chèvre - Goat’s Cheese

The process of making this cheese is very easy but you will need a thermometer. It really helps and, if you cook a lot, it’s a good idea to buy one.

If you can’t find goat’s buttermilk which luckily I did, use cow’s buttermilk.

If you want a creamy consistency then I would advise you to let the cheese drain for 1 hour. After 2 hours it will be semi-soft and after 4 hours it will be very crumbly. Experiment, and if you end up with a more dry cheese than you’d prefer, add the whey back to the cheese, about ½ tsp at a time, folding it in until you reach the desired consistency.

Yield: about 300 g

Ingredients
750 ml fresh goat’s milk
500 ml fresh goat’s (or cow's if you can't find it) buttermilk
Juice of 1 lemon (about 60 ml)
½ tsp fine sea salt

Special equipment: candy/deep-frying thermometer, large cheesecloth or muslin cloth, fine sieve or colander


Preparation
In a medium-sized, heavy-bottomed saucepan, add the milk and buttermilk and attach the thermometer to the pan. Heat over medium-high heat and bring the milk to a temperature of 80 degrees Celsius / 175 Fahrenheit. It will take about 10 minutes to reach that temperature and at this point, the milk should bubble and start to curdle. If not, leave it on the heat until it does but don’t allow it to come to the boil.

Take it off the heat and add the lemon juice. Lightly stir with a spatula and you’ll clearly see it curdling. Don’t stir anymore and allow the temperature to drop to 55-60 degrees Celsius / 130-140 Fahrenheit. It will take about ½ hour and the curds will thicken as the temperature drops.

Line a fine sieve (or colander) with cheese or muslin cloth and set it over a large bowl to catch the whey. Slowly pour the curds into the cloth and drain the whey into the bowl. You can either save the whey for another use or throw it away. It would be good to throw it away after your cheese is ready in case it turns out too dry. By adding whey back into it, it will become creamy. Tie the top of the cheesecloth with baker’s twine, as close to the cheese and as tight as possible, and hang it somewhere in your kitchen over a bowl to catch the drippings.

Leave it for about 2 hours to have a proper chèvre consistency. (Or read notes above the ingredients list for alternatives).
Untie the twine, open the cloth and remove the cheese carefully. At this point, you can add your herbs and salt stirring them into the cheese or if you don’t want to mess with the nice ball of cheese, simply sprinkle salt over the top.

You can keep it in the fridge, inside a plate and covered with plastic wrap, for up to 1 week but if you’re anything like us, it will not last more than a day or two. Having said that, the flavor of the cheese will intensify after a couple of days in the fridge so perhaps the second time you make it, it would be worth it to leave it there to see the difference in taste.

The Tyropita

I have no idea how I can successfully catch a cold, which of course develops into a full-fledged flu, the worst possible time when I’m incredibly busy and can’t afford to be sick. Yes, folks, let the complaining begin.

I have the flu, or to be perfectly honest, I’m almost over it because if I were smack in the middle of suffering from it, I wouldn’t be able to write a single word, let alone a whole blog post.

I believe I’m very easy-going when I’m sick. I’m high-maintenance the rest of the time so I give people around me a break when I’m under the weather. Ha! Honestly though, I just sit quietly on the couch, watching my tv shows and films, falling asleep, making my own cup of tea and soup, unlike some other people (let’s not name names) that demand to be waited on hand and foot when they have a plain cold.

But let’s get to the tyropita (τυρόπιτα / pronounciation: tee-roh-pee-tah), the Greek cheese pie, which is the reason I got off my cozy couch. The word tyropita is not a simple word in the Greek language. There’s not a single Greek out there who doesn’t have a very specific image of tyropita in their mind the second they hear the word.

It’s one of the most well-known pies in Greek cuisine (next to spanakopita), a pie that everyone knows how to make and that everyone certainly knows how to devour in record time. And of course everyone has their favorite kind, because yes, there are different kinds of tyropita. Those can either depend on the type of dough used (phyllo, kourou, puff pastry), or the type of cheese(s) used, the most common of course being feta.

My ideal tyropita is one made with puff pastry. That’s the way my mom always made it, and still does. I have no idea why she prefers sfoliata (Greek word for puff pastry) to the traditional Greek phyllo, I’ve never asked her, as I’ve never had any complaints. I greedily ate my piece every single time she prepared tyropita.

Whenever I make my own puff pastry, I always bake a tray of tyropita. I use feta, ricotta (anthotyro when I’m in Greece) and a béchamel sauce all mixed together to create the filling. The result is a salty and slightly sweet cheese pie with that incomparable flavor and texture of puff pastry encasing the cheeses. A flaky, golden-brown and buttery puff pastry that makes my tyropita the best there is.

Tyropita – Greek Cheese Pie

You can use either homemade puff pastry (like I did), or ready-made. Just make sure the store-bought one is made with butter and not vegetable fat.
Whichever kind of puff pastry you use, make sure to thaw it properly. Remove it from the freezer and place it in the fridge 24 hours before using it.

On cooking puff pastry: The bigger the change in temperature, the more dramatic the puff will be. If for example you take the rolled out pastry straight from the fridge and put it in a preheated oven, it will rise like crazy.
For this tyropita, once you assemble the pie, you must put it in the fridge for 30 minutes while you preheat your oven and then put it straight in.

The recipe for the béchamel sauce is the classic French one and it’s creamy and delicious and it’ll make your tyropita taste incredibly good.

Yield: 1 tyropita / 16 small pieces

Ingredients

for the béchamel sauce
250 ml fresh whole milk
20 g (1½ Tbsp) butter, unsalted
20 g (2 level Tbsp) all-purpose flour
Salt
Freshly ground white pepper

300 g feta (Greek of course), grated
250 g ricotta (or Greek anthotyro if you can find it), crumbled
Freshly ground white pepper
600 g homemade puff pastry or 2 large sheets of ready-made puff pastry

A little butter for greasing the pan

Special equipment: box grater, whisk, rolling pin (to roll out homemade puff pastry), baking pan/tray (34 x 28 cm)


Preparation

for the béchamel sauce
In a small, heavy-based saucepan, add the butter and melt over a low heat. Add the flour and using a whisk, stir and cook for 2-3 minutes until you have a white roux.
While whisking, pour the milk in the saucepan, turn heat up to medium and allow the mixture to come to the boil, whisking continuously to prevent lumps.
Once the béchamel comes to the boil, turn heat down to low and simmer for about 5 minutes, stirring with the whisk every so often, until it thickens. You don’t want the sauce to be too thick though but a little runny so it can be easily mixed with the cheeses.
Season with salt to your liking, add a little white pepper and allow the sauce to cool.

In a large bowl, add the cooled béchamel, the two cheeses and a sprinkling of white pepper and mix with a spatula.

Grease the bottom and sides of your pan with butter.

If you’re using homemade puff pastry, take the dough and divide it into two equal pieces. Dust a clean work surface and the top of the dough with flour and using a rolling pin, roll out the first piece of dough into a rectangle, a little bigger than the size of the pan, with a thickness of 0.2-0.3 cm. The thickness of the puff pastry is important because it determines the baking time. Line the bottom of the pan with the dough (or the ready-made puff pastry), leaving an overhang on all sides and add the filling. Spread it around evenly with a spatula and grind some white pepper on top.
Roll out the second piece of dough (or use the ready-made puff pastry) and place it on top of the filling. Press together the two sheets of puff pastry at the edges of the tyropita and cut with a knife the extra overhanging dough, leaving just a little around the edges. Crimp up the edges of the puff pastry.
With a knife, score the pie, creating 16 equal-sized square pieces and score the crimped up edges as well.

Note: Don’t score all the way down to the filling because the cheeses will ooze out while baking.

Place the baking pan in the refrigerator for 30 minutes and preheat your oven to 185-190 degrees Celsius / 365-375 Fahrenheit.

Take the baking pan out of the fridge and place it straight on the middle rack of the oven. Bake the tyropita for 55-60 minutes until the dough puffs up and takes on a golden-brown color.

Take it out of the oven and allow it to cool. As it cools, the puff pastry will gradually deflate. Cut the tyropita into pieces and serve.

You can keep it in a cool place in your kitchen, covered lightly with aluminum foil for 1-2 days.

The Tyrokafteri

I don't know if I've told you this, even though you may have already guessed it if you've been reading this blog for a while, but I can't live without feta. Feta cheese I mean. It's as simple as that. If someone told me that for some reason I couldn't eat feta, I would fall into deep culinary depression. Not even chocolate would be able to save me.

Don't make fun of me, but whenever I eat Greek cheese pie, which is a pie filled to the brim with feta, I have to have feta on the side, and to further embarrass myself, I'll admit that whenever I eat Chinese, Indian, Japanese or Thai food, I always have a huge piece of feta next to my plate. I'm totally aware that the flavors don't match—somehow I don't think people in Thailand consider feta cheese a staple—but I just can't eat something without having feta on the side.

I don't know why I'm addicted to it, I can't figure it out. One could argue that it's because I'm Greek but, no, there are other Greeks, many Greeks, who prefer other cheeses. I guess it'll remain a mystery. I'm pretty sure some of you empathize with me, though. You too may have some type of food that you just can't part with no matter what. C'mon, admit it.

My whole life I've been enjoying Greek, barrel-aged feta and when I moved to Holland five years ago I knew I'd have a problem. My greatest fear was that I would have to compromise with an inferior type of feta or even worse, imitation feta. Thankfully, I was wrong since I can find Greek feta of excellent quality here, so crisis averted.

Anyway, enough with my feta rumblings. Let's get to this dip/spread. There is a multitude of recipes in Greek cuisine that contain feta but one of my absolute favorites is the mezes called tyrokafteri. Tyrokafteri literally means 'hot cheese' and it's just that. Whipped cheese that is super hot; the heat coming from the addition of either fresh green hot peppers or boukovo, which is Greek dried red chilli flakes.

There are two types of tyrokafteri, the classic white one (aspri) and the other one, the more playful one, the red (kokkini). The white consists mainly of cheese and hot green peppers and it is indeed delicious, otherwise I wouldn't have whipped up some yesterday, nevertheless the red one is the superior of the two. It is far more complex and interesting flavor-wise as it contains long sweet red peppers that add sweetness and level out the heat of the boukovo, Greek strained yoghurt which gives an extra dimension of creaminess, and smoked paprika that adds a depth of flavor and a pleasant smoky quality to the dip.

Slathered on a slice of good sourdough bread or whole-wheat crackers, added in your favorite sandwich, served as a side dish for steaks or biftekia (Greek meat patties), or as a simple dip for crudités or pita, it's one of those Greek classics that should be a part of your repertoire. Tzatziki is not the only delicious Greek dip out there.

Tyrokafteri Kokkini - Greek Feta and Sweet Red Pepper Spicy & Hot Dip
Adapted from Aglaia Kremezi

Tyrokafteri is smooth and creamy but once you put it in the fridge it hardens up, making it difficult to spread. Before you serve it, make sure to leave it out of the fridge for half an hour.
Use good quality Greek feta and if you can find barrel-aged feta, which has a peppery flavor, then the results will be spectacular.

Yield: about 700 g / enough for about 12 people

Ingredients
500 g feta (if you can find different varieties where you live, use medium to soft in texture feta)
80 ml extra virgin olive oil
2 fresh long sweet red peppers (about 220 g), deseeded and roughly chopped
1 tsp boukovo or crushed dried red chilli flakes (or 1½ tsp if you enjoy the heat)
3 heaped Tbsp Greek strained yoghurt, 2% or full-fat (I use Total)
1 tsp red-wine vinegar
1 tsp sweet smoked paprika or sweet paprika

Fresh chives, finely chopped, for garnishing

Special equipment: large food processor


Preparation
Place the feta in a bowl and add enough water from the tap to cover it. Leave it in the water for 15 minutes which will get rid of the saltiness. This process is called in Greek "ksalmirisma" meaning removal of the salt.

In the meantime, add the olive oil to a medium-sized skillet and heat over medium heat. Add the chopped red peppers along with the boukovo and sauté them, stirring regularly, until they soften but don't brown. Take the pan off the heat and let the peppers cool in the pan.

When the 15 minutes have passed, drain the feta from the water, cut it into pieces and place it in the food processor. Add the cooled down peppers, along with all the juices accumulated in the pan, scraping it well, followed by the yoghurt, the vinegar, and the paprika.
Process until you have a smooth and creamy mixture. Give the tyrokafteri a taste and if you find it to be too salty, add a little more yoghurt.

Empty it into a bowl, sprinkle with the chopped chives and serve.

You can serve it immediately or you can place it in the fridge, where you can keep it covered with plastic wrap, for 1 week.

The Cheese Saganaki

When someone is kind enough (thanks mom) to send you a huge piece of Kefalotyri cheese from home, along with some orzo and Greek thyme honey and numerous other foodstuff you've been craving for months, then the decent and obvious thing to do is, well, eat them right on the day they've arrived. And yes, reader, that's exactly what I did.






When the box of goodies from Greece arrived at my doorstep last month, I couldn't wait to get upstairs and into my kitchen. I cooked up a mean giouvetsi (traditional Greek orzo dish) with chicken, which is not the typical meat you'd use for giouvetsi but I've made the conscious effort to eat red meat as infrequently as possible, and let's not forget, Greek Easter Sunday is only two weeks away when copious amounts of lamb will be consumed by yours truly, plus I'm pretending to be fasting and in my mind, chicken is Lent appropriate.






The honey has been used in various desserts and morning rituals of bread slathered with butter and said honey, and the Kefalotyri has been enjoyed grated on top of aforementioned giouvetsi, nibbled with some freshly baked sourdough bread and good white wine and of course, used in one of my favorite mezes, the saganaki.






I've talked to you about saganaki before (what it is, what the name means, etc) when I made one with soutzouki, tomato and eggs, but I've held off sharing with you my true saganaki love; the cheese saganaki. So here it is.






You take a big slab of Kefalotyri cheese, you dredge it in flour and then you drop it into the sizzling olive oil. You watch it as it turns from pale, creamy white and smooth-textured, to yellow, golden brown and crispy all around.






You carefully take it out of the saganaki pan, you squeeze some lemon juice over the top and you dig in. Salty, fried, zingy goodness straight into the mouth. Along with a glass of white wine or ouzo and some good company, it's really all you need to be happy.
Okay, maybe some extra mezes wouldn't hurt.











Greek Kefalotyri Cheese Saganaki (Fried Kefalotyri Cheese)

The cheese that's suitable for saganaki is a hard cheese because it needs to keep its shape during frying and not melt. Here, I used a Kefalotyri from Kastoria, a beautiful city in northern Greece, which is not too salty and is very firm. When the cheese is fried, its salty flavor is intensified so avoid using overly salty cheese.
A good substitute for Kefalotyri is Pecorino Romano or Pecorino Sardo.

Cheese saganaki can also be made with numerous other Greek cheeses like Graviera or Kefalograviera (similar to Gruyère), Kaseri (similar to Kashkaval or Caciocavallo), Metsovone (similar to Provolone), hard Feta, or Halloumi.

This Kefalotyri saganaki will definitely be making an appearance at my Easter Sunday table as it pairs excellently with lamb.






Yield: enough for 2 people

Ingredients
A large piece of Kefalotyri cheese (12 x 9 cm with 2.5 cm thickness), around 140 g, rind removed
2-3 Tbsp all-purpose flour
Olive oil (or sunflower oil), enough to come up 1-1 ½ cm up the sides of the pan

A lemon wedge

Special equipment: saganaki (small, round frying pan with two handles) or small frying pan


Preparation
Take the Kefalotyri cheese piece and place it under running water for a couple of seconds, enough to moisten it.
Place the flour on a plate and dredge the Kefalotyri in the flour on all sides, making sure you coat it well. Gently tap the excess flour off.


Pour the oil in your saganaki or small frying pan and heat over medium-high heat. When the oil starts to shimmer and it has gotten really hot, add the Kefalotyri.
Fry the cheese for about 2 minutes on one side, then turn it on the other side and fry it for another 2 minutes, or until it has taken on a golden-brown color.


Turn the heat off and take the cheese out of the pan using a spatula. Place the cheese saganaki on a plate covered with paper towels in order to absorb the excess oil and then onto a serving plate.

Serve with a lemon wedge. Squeeze the juice over the top and enjoy!

If you want to serve the fried cheese in the saganaki pan, then pour out the oil and serve.