Feta Cheese: Into the Feta-Verse

This cheese gets its tasty tang from sheep/goat milk and aging in a brine instead of open air. Anney and Lauren dig into the science and history of feta cheese.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to Savor production of I Heart Radio.
I'm Annie Reese and I'm Lauren Vocal Bam, and today
we have an episode for you about feta cheese. Yes, yes, yes,
And I have been on a bit of a fedaki
quickly so tailing very nicely. Oh I I feel like
I should always be yes, and I am currently not.

(00:32):
I've been into a pretty heavy like Bree Comembert kind
of kind of situation, which is honestly sort of something
that I'm always in the middle of. Um, but yeah,
I understood, feel good. It's just cheese is good. I
like cheese. I like food. I think I've mentioned that before. Yeah,
it makes sense for the show. I'd be really sad otherwise. Yeah.

(00:56):
I mean actually, on a day to day basis, eating
is a pine in right right in the rear. It's
terrible that you have to do it every day. Yeah, yeah,
it can be. And you know, the procuring of the food, right,
the making of the food every and every day, Like,
come on, human body, what are you doing? Yeah? Right

(01:19):
up there asleep? No heck I can't. I sleep and
then I'm still tired. That's ridiculous. But anyway, I do
feel like, you know, there's cheese in our lives, and
they come and go, they change. But I am in

(01:40):
a feta one right now. I think it's summary. And
I've been creaving like chickpeas and tomatoes and launtro so
I like make a chickpee salad with feta and that
sounds lovely good. Yeah, um okay, all right, well like

(02:00):
I'm like a rewriting next week's shopping list. We'll we'll
work this out. Mm hmmmm hmmm. Was there any particular reason.
Was it just time for a cheese episode? It was
it was just time for a cheese episode. I was like, well,
it's been at a minute, let's do cheese. Oh always,
always uh And I do often think of the we

(02:24):
were at a food veestival in Atlanta and we have
this watermelon feta. I think there was some basil involved. Yeah.
I think it was like a like a pressed watermelon,
uh like like bite like just you know, one of
those little just just just a little single like amuse
bouche style bites that you get at these food festivals

(02:46):
and write just like a little bit of feta and
some pressed watermelon and write some kind of basil situation
in there and it was so good and I don't
I'm not sure if I had ever had watermelon and
feta and basil together mm hmm. And it was just
it was so so lovely, so like aggressively lovely, m

(03:12):
so refreshing, and so much flavor packed into one bite. Yeah.
Because it was hot, like we were on a rooftop. Yeah. Yeah.
Atlanta Food and Wine is a very very very lovely
place to be and also very intense because I feel like,
I feel like most of it is just booze and

(03:33):
and people who think it's funny if you get drunk
in the middle of your work day. So uh pof done.
It can be quite a lot, it can be. You
gotta plan things out very well, you do. But a
lot of the food and the drinks are excellent. And
I have tried to look up how to make this watermelon.
I keep calling it salad, so I don't know what

(03:53):
it is, but I keep trying to look up how
to make it, and I can't find it exactly. But
if anyone a clue or a hint or a recipe,
that would be much appreciated. Yes. Well. You can see
many of our past episodes on cheeses. We've done quite
a few at this point. We've done cheddar Bree, Guda, Greer, Ricata,

(04:17):
cream cheese, Rook for mozzarella. I think some more that
maybe I missed. We've done a lot. Yeah, that sounds
like a list. Sure, I think it was a list.
I just know if it wasn't. I'm not sure if
it was complete. But I have no idea. There's no
way we can look this up either, zero zero ways.

(04:40):
So it is a mystery of history of the savor variety. Goodness. Well,
this brings us to probably a number of questions, but
maybe one specific one. Yes, I would agree. Uh, Feta.
What is it? Well, Fetta is a type of cheese

(05:04):
that's a semi firm and white and crumbly, but still
tastes really smooth. Uh. It's a brined cheese, meaning that
it's it's aged in like a slightly acidic saltwater bath
instead of being aged free standing, which prevents a rind
from developing and gives it a tangy, salty flavor. Feta

(05:25):
is traditionally made with sheep's milk, which gives it more
tang and a sort of like savory barney nous like
a little bit of like like peppery bite to it. Yeah. Um,
it's like a it's like if you just put too
much flavor in your cheesecake and and it wound up
being all like lemony and salty. Uh, it's like a

(05:46):
it's like if a pickle were made of cheese. Yeah,
like less crisp, like a like an cheese pickle, pickled cheese. Yes,
that is literally what it is. That's not even a metaphor,
that's just that's a fact. Yeah. Yeah, Still, I feel
like it accomplishes. It accomplishes a lot for the brain

(06:09):
and for the chase buzz. It tells a story. It
tells a story. Well, I'm glad that's what I'm looking
to do here. Uh okay, um alright, Uh, to to
go a little bit deeper here, let's start with some
cheese basics. Uh. And I've done this, like however many

(06:30):
times we've done cheese is before. I'm not going to
go super deep into the bacteria, poop and everything today.
But but okay, cheese is a way of preserving milk
past its expiry date and making it more clorically dense
and portable. Um by getting some of the water content
out of there and condensing the proteins and fats and flavors. Yeah.

(06:53):
Um Fetta is a type of cheese that has a
protected as a nation of origin these days, which means
that like with Champagne, where it can only be properly
called Champagne if it is produced with specific traditional methods
in the Champagne region of France, Feta is only properly

(07:15):
feta if it's made in particular ways in particular parts
of Greece. Uh. And this is partially marketing thing, partially
a consumer protection thing, like so that you know what
you're getting, and partially a producer protection thing so that
you're not like getting undercut by inferior products from who
knows where mm hmm. So making a proper feta involves

(07:40):
grazing native breeds of sheep and maybe goats on local
plants and then collecting their milk seasonally. Um Feta can
be up to like goat milk, but mostly sheep in there. Yeah.
But at any rate, once you've got your milk, it
is coagulated or de emulsified uh, either with friendly acid

(08:01):
producing bacteria or with rennet, which is an enzyme that
baby ruminants like shape and goats have to help them
separate and digest milk in their stomachs. It can also
be farmed in labs using microbes. Anyway, that the result
is that a lot of the fats and proteins in
the milk bundle up in kurds, which can then be

(08:22):
pressed into molds, and a lot of the water can
be a strained and or drained off, leaving you right
with the semi firm cheese. It's then sliced and salted,
placed in containers like barrels and covered with brine basically
just salt water, and then um aged or or ripened

(08:42):
in a couple of stages for at least two months,
and I think usually less than a year. Uh, like
two to nine months, I think is the number that
I saw out there, But I couldn't find a firm
cap on the ripening time period at any rate. Yeah,
that's all, yes, oh, yes, Lauren, um uh. The feta

(09:08):
is then packaged and sold, sometimes in a little bit
of brine, sometimes canned in an oil like an olive oil,
sometimes just wrapped up by itself. You might put some
herbs or spices in there, especially in the canned type,
and Yeah, Feta can be eaten fresh by itself or
with other pickled products, cut into salads, crumbled and stuffed

(09:31):
into I don't know, you know, whatever needs some cheese
crumbled into it. Uh. You can whip it up and
mix it with seasonings to make spreads or dips. You
can cook it into any number of savory dishes to
add a creamy tang, bake it into or onto savory
or sweet breads and pastries. Ah ah m, all right, yeah,

(09:55):
Well what about the nutrition. Cheese is a nutritionally dead food. Uh,
Fetta has got a good punch of protein, tends to
be high and saturated fats and in salt. It's got
a good spread of micro nutrients. Like you know, watch
your portion sizes, eat a vegetable, drink some water, always yeah, always. Yeah.

(10:16):
I do feel like in my experience, and I could
be totally wrong, and actually we're going to kind of
counterpoint my point in a second, I feel like when
you eat fetta, you don't eat a lot of feta. Um,
you can, but I feel like a lot of times
it's sort of the like fancy thing you only get
a little bit of. Yeah whatever, Yeah, I guess I

(10:38):
don't write like I usually don't sit down to like
a whole block of fetta the way that I sometimes
do kind of often do with other cheeses. But you know,
it's your mileage may vary depending on Yeah, yes, it's true,
because we do have some numbers for we do we do, okay,

(11:02):
So Feeda makes up some n of the total production
of cheese in Greece, and grease is the largest consumer
of Feta cheese. As of two thousand and seven and five,
they make up over sev of Feda consumption in the
European Union. Um. According to Culture magazine, which is a

(11:24):
cheese magazine, cheese Culture get um uh, it is often
eaten at every meal in Greece right right in. I've
never been to there, so yeah, yes please right in. Uh.
Grease also makes up around of global exports. In the
estimated value of the export of Greek cheese was around
two eighty seven million euros and the industry employed thousands

(11:47):
of people. I don't think that was specifically feda. Yeah, yeah,
like like yeah. A number that I read from twenty
nineteen said that the mark it for feta was worth
like globally worth over ten billion dollars a year and growing. Um. Yeah.

(12:09):
Feta cheeses from Greece were exported to thirty five countries
over five continents by and apparently exports amounted to around
thirty thousand tons per year as of uh Germany was
consuming most of that around UM. The UK and Italy

(12:31):
were the next largest consumers, with fourteen percent and twelve
percent of the export market respectively. The United States was
a little bit under that UM. As of two thousand
and six, we bought a collective fourteen point four million
pounds of feta cheese, and according to YouGov dot com,
at any rate, two percent of Americans say that feta

(12:53):
is in fact their favorite cheese. Mm hmm, yeah, Feta
cheese makes up of Greece's food exports overall. Wow. Yeah,
so a big deal? Mm hmmm, well historically has it

(13:15):
been a big deal? U? Short answer, Yes, Long answers
coming at you as soon as we get back from
a quick break for a word from our sponsors. Can
we're back, thank you sponsored? Yes, thank you so briefly,

(13:37):
because yes, we have talked about this so many times
in our past cheese episodes, in our yogurt episode. Oh right, yeah, totally. Yes.
Cheese is thought to be an accidental discovery invented across
multiple continents simultaneously and at multiple times both. The common
story is someone traveling in heat and storing milk and

(13:59):
an animal bladder container. They're they're traveling along and presto
the movement the temperature of the time equals cheese. Yeah. Yeah,
blood plus a little help with coagulation from right, either
those friendly bacteria that live all around us or those
enzymes that some animals bodies make in order to help
them digest milk. Yeah yes, um. But also there's there's

(14:21):
a plenty of legends about story milk and cold caves
or something like that. Um, depending on the cheese that
does that does make a difference in these origin stories,
of course. Um. And in the case of Feta, you
know people, not all people had cold caves just laying
about to store their cheese in. So um. Sometimes uh,

(14:45):
humans developed brining methods to keep unfriendly microbes out and
let's preserve their cheese for a few months or more.
Even in slightly warmer, non cave related instances. It sounds
like early early like weather productions, weather forecast non gave

(15:05):
conditions warm Okay, So the origin of feta specifically is
tricky to pin down. I feel like that should be
a bingo space if it's not already. Oh yeah. According
to food researcher and author Clifford A Right, because Fedda,
the word doesn't exist in classical Greek, this cheese may

(15:27):
actually be Italian in origin. However, he also notes that
there is a brind cheese described in Homer's the Odyssey,
written in the ninth century b C. Which I feel
like the Odyssey comes up a lot in these episodes. Um,
and this cheese maybe an ancestor of feta cheese. In
Greek mythology, the gods sent Apollo's son to teach the

(15:50):
Greeks how to make cheese. I love that, um And
sometimes Fedda is referred to as the oldest cheese in
recorded history because of this. Again, I feel like there's
a lot of arguments in gray areas what is veta?
But absolutely, oh man, and now I want to do now,
I want to do a whole episode about the Odyssey.

(16:10):
And yes, I feel like most of the food references
in there are cannibalism. Um, but you know, why not?
Why not? Why not? We'll go places, we'll have discussions,
will be great. Well, in the spirit of that, I
didn't want to include the quote from the Odyssey. We

(16:35):
entered the cave, but he wasn't there. Only his plump
sheep graze in the meadow. The woven baskets were full
of cheese, The folds were full of sheep and goats,
and all his pots, tubs and churns where he drew
the milk were full of whey. When half of the
snow white milk curdled, he collected it, put it in
the woven baskets, and kept the other half in a
tempt to drink. Why, my good Ram, are you the

(16:56):
last to leave the fold? You have never been left
behind by the flock before. You were always first walking
ahead to graze the tender sheets of grass. H oh,
that's lovely. Yeah. And this was the cyclops, by the way,
who was making this cheese? This probable feta um. Yeah,
but again, I feel like we may have used this

(17:17):
very same quote before to talk about the origin of
another day. Well, it's possible, Yeah, it could be. It's
up for interpretation, you know, absolutely, mm hmmm. I would
love it, just the cheese interpretation of the Odyssey. That's
the whole man culture. Mag get in touch with us. Clearly,

(17:44):
we're like we like puns, so I think we'll get along.
In the fourteenth century, of Venetian cookbook included two recipes
for what could have been feta cheeses. Early feta cheeses
are pretty close to how we view feta chee us today. Uh.
These recipes indicated that their inspirations were from the island

(18:04):
of Crete. One of these recipes specifically includes instructions for
washing the cheese again, could be another cheese okay, yeah,
yeah yeah. The word feta, meaning slice, first appeared in
the written record in the seventeenth century. This was most
likely in reference to the practice of slicing this cheese

(18:26):
in order to place it into barrels. Yeah for the brining. Yeah. M.
Many Greeks migrated to different countries, included the United States
during the twentieth century, and through that their cuisine further
spread around the world and Greek communities were formed across
the globe, and this bolstered feta's reputation and also the
demand for fata. The international trade of this cheese blossomed,

(18:50):
and in the nineteen thirties Greek officials laid out the
rules and guidelines for what makes a cheese feta, rules
around the milk, um, the milk that was used, and
auction methods went into effect in n and Yes, legally,
FEDA has been subject to a lot of back and
forth around protected designation of Origins r p d o

(19:12):
s as you mentioned earlier. Um, basically, FEDA have this
protected status as of and then it was revoked based
on the argument that FEDA was a common term, and
then it was later re registered and ultimately reintroduced in
two thousand and two. So argument around, well, good for feda, UM,

(19:35):
I will say that she has got a boost in
the United States in the early two thousand's with the
rise of the so called Mediterranean diet. Yeah, and then
we need to talk about viral feta recipes. Oh no,
I'm nervous. You're saying this very seriously. Okay, it is,

(19:56):
it is very serious, okay, all right. And and and
the one that you, dear listener maybe thinking about is
not the one I'm going to start this story with.
Because there was a recipe blog post in Finland in
February of twenty nineteen for this dish of baked feta pasta.

(20:18):
It's a real simple recipe. You just like put down
a little bit of olive oil and a baking dish,
add a bunch of cherry tomatoes, some salt and pepper,
some garlic, maybe some other seasonings like a chilies or
lemon zest, and plunk in a whole block of feta,
like like seven ounces, like two grams of feta, like
straight from the package. Just boop it right into the pan.
Baked that at like four hundred fahrenheit two hundred celsius

(20:42):
for fifteen minutes, Broil it for another ten minutes, pop
it out of the oven, mix it together, and that's
your pasta sauce. You cook off your pasta separately, toss
it with the sauce, maybe some fresh basil. So simple,
so photogenic, sounds so good. Yeah, sales of feta in
Finland exploded like three d The recipe got two point

(21:06):
seven million views in a year and a half. Finland
has like five and a half million residents, so so
this recipe went places and it was not done. Oh
no uh. In February of one, a TikTok video featuring

(21:26):
this recipe went viral in the United States and like
low key internationally, UM, Fetta was suddenly the top search
term on insta cart Um. Demand for the cheese was
up between a hundred and two hundred percent among different
grocery chains. Um. There were hundreds of millions of views
of over forty five thousand videos featuring feda pastas within

(21:52):
like a month. Wow, like early early March, these numbers
had happened. Um. It has been called the potentially the
largest boost in interest in a dairy product in the
history of the United States. Oh my good news, Like

(22:14):
baked feta pasta was a phenomenon. Now this is the
I know we've we threw out a lot of ideas
on here, but the HBO Max series we need is this.
But I wanted to be really serious serious Yeah, oh,
I'm in totally. There's actually sounds good, right right, I

(22:37):
never made it either, um and I and I keep
meaning to because right it just seems so good. Um.
But there was actually a little bit of drama because
UM like like to feed this HBO series because I
think there were like like before this post, this blog
post that went viral, there was another I think blog

(23:00):
post recipe from Finland that was basically the same thing
that didn't go nearly as far, and then not all
of the like TikTok related stuff actually cites either of
those people. So yeah, I mean the copyright of recipes
is the whole thing we could dig into. Yeah yeah, right,

(23:23):
I'm not saying it's going to be like Mrs America,
but you know, like probably the same cast. Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah,
I mean this rights itself. I'm telling you, I'm picturing
like dark neutral colors. Yeah, okay, uh at any rate, Yeah,

(23:48):
let us know about your own baked bedapasta, yes please experiences. Um. Also,
research was published in a special issue of the journal
Applied Sciences. It was the Food Microbiology Dairy Products Microbiota Issue,

(24:11):
which I'm so excited about the existence of. I'm like,
oh did you did you know? Was this written just
for me? Did my birthday come early? Um? Okay, but
so anyway, yes, um this research, this team out of
Greece had set about mapping the microbiome of feta. What

(24:37):
they did was they took twenty three samples of feta
cheese produced in different regions around the country that had
been aged three and six months and took a look
at what microbial cultures were at work. Um, they found
thirty one species from thirteen genera. Whoa what? Yes? And

(25:00):
this is just I mean, aside from being exciting because
I you know, like microbes, Um, this is really cool
because it can help identify how fetas get their flavors
and textures and anti spoilage properties and and other qualities.
And also like what comes from the intentional edition of

(25:20):
specific microbes versus what gets picked up as the cheese
is made in different regions. Yeah, that's very cool, very cool.
See I said we weren't getting that much into bacteria poop,
but bacteria poop. We know. You can never stay too
far away, Lauren. It's never far from my heart. True.

(25:49):
I love it. I love it. What a good place
to end on, because I think that's what we have
to say about Feta cheese for now. It is. We
do have some listener mail for you, though, and we
are going to get into that as soon as we
get back from one more quick break for a word
from our sponsors. And we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes,

(26:14):
thank you, And we're back with SMER. For some reason,
I have I've had the Dexter's Lab theme song stuck
in my head, all right, and then you were talking
about like mapping cheese biomes and I was like, yeah,
there we go. Why Yes, So so many of you

(26:39):
have written in about Dr Who and this is very exciting. Yes,
and we have one from Kelsey today. Um Kelsey wrote, Lauren, Annie,
you made an episode just for me. Thank you so
very much. Okay, okay, except that not everything is about me,
but Doctor Who is to me as Star Wars is

(27:00):
to Annie. My favorite podcast covering the Doctor was infinitely satisfying,
So seriously, thank you. One particular food related moment that
I love is in the episode Aliens of London. The
scene involves Jackie Rose's mom in the kitchen with Mickey
roses on and off again boyfriend at his apartment. A

(27:20):
clethene attacks and they defend themselves by dousing the alien
fiend with all manner of vinegars and pickle brine. The
mix of thrilling, panic, and comedically weaponized food is fantastic.
And yes, despite being meant as family entertainment, The Doctor
is rather intense. I introduced my son to it starting
with the Christopher eccleston season when he was eight. He

(27:41):
loves Doctor Who, but requested we only watch it before noon.
He is ten now and doesn't cover his eyes as
much anymore, but I am still careful to remind him
it's fiction and we can turn it off anytime he wants.
Alonzie ps. I have never verbally responded to my invisible
friends on my evening aug roles so much as I

(28:01):
did listening to this episode of Saver. I love that.
Oh goodness, I love about this message, like I love
that your son was like, we have to watch it
before noon. Yeah, gotta put some safety precautions. And also, yes,

(28:22):
that is an excellent food momentum. I remember that episode.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean why and it
fits with oar feta, you know, but why not throw
vinegar and pickle brinet? Somebody that gets in your eyes
over came over. You're right, no matter what planet you're from,

(28:45):
Victoria wrote. My dad once told me the story of
a birthday he had when he was little, like around
ten years old, so this would have been in the
late fifties or early sixties. When his birthday party plans
were being discussed. My nanna asked what dessert he wanted
to serve but this party, my dad said, he wanted jello.
My nana said, okay, and what type of cake to
go with the jello? So my dad clarified, no cake,

(29:08):
no ice cream, just jello would be available. Fast forward
to the birthday party and there were a bunch of
disappointed kids who were expecting cake. Needless to say, the
following years, jello was not on the party menu. But
you knew what he knew what he wanted. Yeah, and

(29:28):
I really love the specificity of there will be no cake. Yeah,
oh no, no, no my party, yeah jello. Right, No,
I love that, and I and I love and I
think that that's really the element that is like clearly
brought this into like the halls of history that right. Yeah,
you're right. Oh I love this, this type of family
story that's like slightly embarrassing of someone's childhood. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(29:55):
because I think I responded and said, look, I'm gonna
be real, if I showed up to this birthday part,
I would not have been happy either. But kids, you know,
we have a fun way of making all desserts about us,
so only kids, just I see Laura nice, No, you're right,

(30:20):
that is an excellent point. Actually, we might have reached
a deep truth yeah, it's dessert is a very personal thing.
It's true. It's true. And I love our contentions and
opinions around them where we're like no cake jello, yeah
and that and that shall be all. You'll like it

(30:43):
or you'll leave. The ten year old has spoken beautiful.
It really is, uh well, thanks to both of those
listeners were writing. If you would like to write to us,
that you can. Our email is hello at savorpod dot com.
We're also on social media. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram at saver pod and we do hope to

(31:03):
hear from you. Savor is production of I Heart Radio.
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