RECIPE JOURNAL
WHETHER SOFT, STRETCHY, CRUMBLY OR HARD, THERE ARE ENOUGH CHEESE VARIETIES FOR A LIFETIME OF DISCOVERY, EACH WITH ITS OWN DISTINCT QUALITIES.
Whether it’s southern Algeria’s smooth white kemariya, Chile’s sweet, salty, semi-hard chanco or pungent British stilton with its veins and pockets of green-blue mould, cheese arouses culinary passions all over the world. While its origins are hard to pinpoint, it’s believed to have first been made around 7,500 years ago, with cheesemaking initially flourishing in the Middle East and Europe before gradually spreading further afield.
It’s a versatile ingredient, although if you want to cook with it, you need to choose the right cheese for the job. For example, halloumi, with its high melting point and firm texture, is ideal for frying or grilling, something best exemplified by the Cypriot dish halloumi saganaki, in which the cheese is seasoned and fried until it has a crispy, golden crust. In Jammu and Kashmir, meanwhile, rounds of soft, stretchy kalari are traditionally sautéed in their own fat and eaten hot, as a street snack.
When heated, fresh, smooth cheeses create a more oozy mess than aged ones, so pick a young cheddar or gruyére for a pleasing pull or stretch; in the US, squares of mild, processed cheese are one of the go-tos for burgers and grilled cheese sandwiches; in L’Aubrac, France, however, it’s the addition of semi-hard Tome de Laguiole to mashed potatoes and garlic that results in gloriously gooey aligot. As for mature cheeses, such as Italy’s hard, dry parmigiano reggiano, these are generally used to add depth of flavour, either by being grated on top of a dish or incorporated in during the cooking process.
There’s plenty of choice when it comes to cheesy desserts, too, whether it’s a cheesecake, a carefully curated cheeseboard or a dish such as Brazil’s romeu e julieta, which marries slices of fresh, white cheese — traditionally queijo minas — and guava paste for a salty, sweet end to a meal.
The following recipes showcase three of the sweet and savoury ways in which cheese is enjoyed all over the world today, a testament to what we’ve learned in our 7,500-year history of cheesemaking.
These crispy Syrian pastry rolls can be filled with either meat or cheese. Here, they’re stuffed with a mixture of mashed mozzarella and crumbled feta and flavoured with nigella seeds and fresh parsley. Traditional recipes use akkawi, a smooth and mildly salty white brine cheese from the Middle East, which is rolled into a handmade dough before the cigar-shaped savoury pastries are deep fried. This recipe is a quicker and healthier version than the original, but despite the substitutions of shop-bought pastry and cheeses that are more readily avail
