BaconButt wrote:The current Saveur covers Greece and has several good ideas for using Feta in a new way.
BaconButt, thanks for the tip about Saveur!
The Saveur website has some great recipes including a ridiculously-easy-sounding feta tart.
I have been reading a cookbook from the library and I don't want to return it! It is
"How to Roast a Lamb: New Greek Classic Cooking" by a young chef Michael Psilakis. This is a wonderful cookbook that not only offers recipes both simple and complex but also tells the story of a Greek family and of the development of the chef's food life, from his family's table to being named Chef of the Year by both Bon Appetit and Esquire.
Talk about your feta recipes! This cookbook is packed with them. I have already made Psilakis' Red Wine and Feta Vinaigrette and the Tomato and String Bean Salad with it. Great for this time of year and a long sideways step from the typical Greek Village Salad.
Chef Psilakis'
Red Wine and Feta Vinaigrette recipe is on Martha Stewart's website. It is blended in a food processor and becomes creamy and thick.
With the remaining Red Wine and Feta Vinaigrette, I made a pasta salad with cellentani, grape tomatoes, black olives, red onion, zucchini and some broccoli buds.
I used the remainder of my Costco feta to make a spinach and feta stuffing for under the skin of some baked chicken breasts. YUM. Here's the dinner plate with the pasta salad, the chicken, some sautéed mushrooms with balsamic and soy sauce, and some spaghetti squash with fresh tomato "sauce (lots of garlic and parmesan).
YourPalWill wrote:…one of my favorite late summer salads (or sometimes a dessert) is quartered figs over some local wildflower honey, sprinkled with toasted almonds, and some crumbled feta. Its a wonderful combination.
My pal Will, the Psilakis cookbook also has a recipe for Figs stuffed with Feta Wrapped with Pastourma.
Inspired by that, we got as far as making a salad with figs and feta, greens and radicchio. We used a bottled dressing someone had given us, a maple syrup-fig combo thing. The best parts of the salad were the figs and feta. The dressing was just off-tasting and sad. We concluded that even a simple homemade version slipping some maple syrup into a figgy vinaigrette would have been better.
I hope this short quote from Psilakis falls under fair-use:
"Feta: Shifting boundaries in the eastern Mediterranean and Balkans make it difficult to trace the origins of this beloved cheese: at one point, half of Greece was Bulgaria and half of Bulgaria was Greece. It is believed that the Greeks have been making a fetalike cheese since the twelfth century, even if it was called something else. While Greece is home to several other wonderful cheeses (like mizithra, graviera, kefalotiri and kasseri), in northern Greece at least, any and all "cheese" is assumed to be feta. Traditionally, feta is made from 100 percent sheep's milk. Feta can be sold at the age of two months of age. Younger feta is often eaten alone; the mature cheeses are perfect as a component of salads and other dishes.
"Feta deteriorates when not stored in brine, so try to buy it in brine and, if at a service counter, ask for a little more brine to be ladled over your cheese. Or you can make more brine at a ratio of 1 quart water to 3/4 cup kosher salt, dissolved. If you buy feta in bulk and store it in brine, keep your fingers out of the container to avoid introducing bacteria; retrieve what you need each time with a clean pair of tongs."