michelle picker cooks

You might be familiar with Persian marinated feta. It’s not the sort of feta you would normally buy for a Greek salad. Persian feta is a much softer and creamier cheese. In Iran, a soft cheese like this would traditionally be served with flat bread and herbs and not necessarily marinated. Either way, it’s delicious. There are a few ingredients required to make this and it also requires some time, but not very much hands-on time.

To make this cheese you will need a cheese culture and some rennet. Cheese cultures raise the acidity of milk by converting the lactose to lactic acid, disabling bacteria and helping the rennet to set the cheese. A mesophillic starter culture (like flora danica) is ideal because the milk is not heated to a high temperature for this cheese. You’ll also need to make sure everything you use is sanitised. 5 litres (5.3 quarts) of full cream cows milk will yield 250g (8.8 oz) of cheese. Heat the milk to 20-30ºC (68-86ºF). Add the starter – a tiny tip of a teaspoon for dry starter or 1% for liquid. If the starter is dry, allow it to bloom a little before gently stirring it through the milk. After 5 minutes add 10 drops of rennet and gently stir. Allow the cheese to incubate overnight, keeping the temperature between 20-30ºC (68-86ºF). Putting the saucepan of milk in a well-insulated esky works really well. The next day, the milk should have set into a large curd surrounded by whey. You will need some cheese cloth and strainers as well as a generous container underneath to catch the whey. Scoop out spoonfuls of the cheese into the cloth-lined strainers until they are full. After 3-4 hours, sprinkle the cheese with salt – about 1 teaspoon of salt for all of the cheese, whether you have 4 strainers or 1. After another 2 hours flip the cheese. This will require another cloth-lined strainer and a swift turning action. When the cheese is turned, sprinkle the top with the same amount of salt. Leave the cheese to drain overnight. The next day your cheese will be ready to marinate. You can vary the ingredients to your taste but don’t include fresh ingredients if you plan to keep the cheese for a while and don’t use too much olive oil as the taste can be too strong for the mild cheese. I used a larger proportion of grape seed oil infused with garlic and bay leaf plus some good quality olive oil. I added toasted and coarsely ground cumin seeds, coriander seeds, caraway seeds and black peppercorns. There are so many possibilities…