Folegandros Cheeses

The Folegandros cheeses are cheeses made with home-made cheese by cheesemakers or housewives, after processing the sterile fresh goat's and sheep's milk in the traditional way. It is the way that decades ago, in the same places, the giant Polyphemus made his cheeses in his mythical cave.

Cheeses like strain or strainedThe maneuver, the cream cheeseThe myzithra, the melichloro, the rolled (dipped in red wine sediment), the oil cheese are the most important cheeses of the island. The most popular cheese is strained. Fresh, soft and peppery, (like the xinomyzithra of Paros, or the cheese of Mykonos, or the rock of Tinos) it accompanies salads or is used as a filling in the famous pies of Folegandros, the cheese, the onion, the straiteni etc. Folegandros It is called any cheese that is dry, mature and is usually used to grate it in spaghetti and macaques.

At the village Petousis, in June 2015, the period when I visited the island for its presentation Greek Breakfast of Folegandros, we visited the cheese dairy of George Karystineos, in a complex of traditional stone buildings (themonia), which is considered the most important cheese maker on the island.

We followed the standard procedures. Milking, straining the milk, boiling in a cauldron with low temperatures, throwing rennet, stirring with the "shaker". Then, next to the cheese staircase (slate terrace), the cheeses from the vourla, welcome the curd. Once dry and shaped, they are salted and placed in a reed hanging bed (cheese bed) where they mature.

The whey, which is left, is boiled again and myzithra which rises to the surface is placed in smaller shots and it is left aside to drain and eaten fresh.

The ripe cheeses are washed in the sea and depending on the processing they will be rolled or oiled.