How they make cheese on Crete

A lot of prizes given to Greek cheeses explain why the annual consumption of cheese per capita is higher in Greece than in any other European country. Soft, creamy and firm, white and yellow, fresh and ripe, sweet and salty – each of them is worthy, they all are being made with knowledge, and skill. In Greece there are more than 70 various kind of cheese. Cook them, mix, grate them and sprinkle dishes, eat with wine, fry them, and stuff.

The Aegean Sea sheltered innumerable large and small islands having their own culinary traditions, ancient ones like Homer. Islanders lead a unique life, which is determined by a deep connection with the place and family roots. Each island produces its own special kind of cheese.

Being on Crete, remember, that Cretan cheeses belong to the ingredients of the health and longevity of the islanders.

In general, the main feature of the cheese, made on Crete, is the milk: almost all cheeses here are being made from sheep or goat milk. You can go all the way across Crete, but never see any cow unlike various small cattle: you come across it all the time.

On Crete the most famous kind of cheese is graviera. The best graviera is being made from non-pasteurized sheep’s milk in the mountainous areas of the island in the spring when the slopes of the mountains are covered with a living carpet of flowering grasses. Graviera from goat’s milk is considered of lower quality. This cheese is sweet, being young and then nutty, and sonorous – a ripened one.

Kefalograviera is heavier than graviera, a spicy cheese – a table one, used often in baked dishes such as pastitchio and moussaka.

If you made a mistake and did not buy graviera in the city or in the market, a cheese range of just over a kilogram will cost you 30 euros in a duty-free shop on the ground floor of the Heraklion airport. In Chania, in the market the same weight of graviera is twice as cheap.

Myzithra is a cheese from fresh whey, having a relatively low fat content – similar to cottage cheese. On Crete, this very fresh cheese is as popular as ricotta in Italy.

How to prepare myzithra. Sheep milk is pored into a large pan and put on fire. As soon as the milk begins to boil, the fire is reduced to the smallest one, and vinegar is added – a glass for 12 liters of milk. Clumps appearing on the surface are collected by a skimmer and put into a basket covered inside with muslin cloth. In that way, you are making so several layers. Each of them you sprinkle with coarse salt. When the basket is full, mix the contents well enough to make the salt evenly distributed. That’s all. What a pleasure to scoop up still hot and steaming homemade cheese with a spoon! Despite the salt, the taste is creamy and slightly sweet. It’s delicious. But a fresh myzithra with bitterish small Cretan olives, sweet ripe tomatoes together with Cretan bread are even more tasty foods. All it is very tasty with a glass of homemade white wine.

On Crete, in addition to fresh myzithra, they eat a young one: this cheese acquires a semi hard texture and is a bit like the bryndza but not as salty as it. If you will wait till the myzithra matures, you get an anthotyros – it’s a variety of ricotta. This is a fairly hard cheese, which is used primarily grated – for pasta.

Staka is a cholesterol-rich delicacy that can only be found in the western part of the island of Crete and is prepared from cream, skimmed from sheep’s milk. It’s hard to call it cheese, rather a dairy product, often used on Crete instead of butter or margarine for frying eggs or preparing spaghetti and pies.

And, of course, feta cheese – the Greek cheese for all seasons.

In Greece the cheese is served with the main dish. Feta as the Greek cheese is constantly accompanied by a winter salad of boiled bitter greens or by the main dish of summer vegetables, stewed in olive oil. An unusual storage of feta has a logical explanation: feta is a moist cheese without any crust. In brine it’s maturing and becoming hard. It retains its taste only if left immersed in water.

Feta is the quintessential Greek table cheese. It can perfectly be combined with other dishes. They use feta as the main ingredient, preparing spicy pies with eggs or with a combination of various cheeses as well as in mixtures of greens with cheese. It’s also the main part in meze – a selection of small starters. It’s baked on the grill or in paper and prepared as a sauté, sometimes with a crust of nuts or sesame seeds as well as just with eggs, and flour.

New technologies came to the dairy industry in Greece. Cheese-making is no longer a simple local task. The same thing had been happening throughout Europe, and finally, the European Commission had to adopt the labeling rules “Protected designation of origin” (PDO) for characteristic traditional food products. Twenty Greek cheeses got the PDO status.

Cretan cheeses:

Graviera Crete (PDO) is a hard cheese made from goat or sheep’s milk, the most refined of all hard Greek cheeses. It’s is covered with a natural crust, the inside looks light yellow and has small holes.

Kefalotyri is the most famous spicy Cretan cheese. It’s hard, made of sheep’s milk and most spicy if its maturing lasted more than a year in a stone sheepfold high up in the mountains. Then this cheese is called leaky.

Xinomisithra (PDO) is a fairly sour soft table cheese, containing few calories. It’s used for preparation of kalitsounia and sarikopites.

Myzithra or Anthotyros is a soft, sweetish, rather fat, old white cheese made from sheep’s milk. If one will salt the myzithra on the outside and leave to ripen, it will harden, get a spicy thick taste and will be called Anthotyros, which is considered to be one of the best table cheeses.

Tirozouli is a semi tough homemade cheese, prepared from goat’s milk.

Malaka is a dense and soft cheese with a neutral sweet taste and elastic substance similar to mozzarella. It’s prepared only in the spring and used for cooking a kalitsounia of Chania and a meat pie.

Pichtogalo Hanion is a soft and creamy cheese with a sour, fresh taste, manufactured exclusively in the Chania area. The cheese is smeared on barley paximathia. They also use it to make a meat pie.

Staka is a cream cheese of soft taste, prepared from a tsipa – a warmed up by slow fire cream. It’s eaten warm, spread on bread.