Greek Cheese

"This is a fascinating book about Greek cheeses. Greek cheese isn’t only feta! The author has the most wonderful photographs of many different types of cheeses. He talks about where they are made and how they are made. Also he gives a history of cheese from early times and he has a collection of very tempting recipes, also with photographs. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter Of the old fashioned recipes, he has pastitsio, which is a macaroni dish with minced meat that you put in the oven. It calls for kefalotiri, a hard piquant yellowish cheese, and then there is stuffed squid which uses feta and another more modern dish, aubergines with manouri, which is an excellent rich white cheese. And there is another delicious dish of pancakes stuffed with asparagus and kasseri, which is a pale yellow cheese that melts beautifully. All these cheeses are made of goat’s milk or sheep’s milk or a mixture. Very few Greek cheeses use cow’s milk. They should sit at an ouzeri and have that ouzo you mentioned earlier on. Then they should order practically everything on the menu, which can have up to a hundred wonderful little plates that we call mezedes . They will include anything from taramasalata to eggplant salad to cheese pies and boiled beets with garlic sauce. They can follow up with an assortment of small fish, grilled octopus and minty meatballs. Ideally, they should be sitting by the sea for this feast."