Mastelo

Today I am back with another Greek speciality. It is less a recipe, but more a kind of cheese. I speak about the very tasty mastelo cheese.

Mastelo is a soft cheese made out of cow milk. The cheese has a chewy texture and tastes mild, but has a savory flavor. Mastelo originally comes from the Greek island Chios. There you can order mastelo in basically every tavern.

In 1994, Mastelo® was first produced by Konstantinos Toumazos, now you can buy it in the local markets of Chios, in Athens, Thessaloniki and other Greek places. Mastelo® is produced out of high quality milk. The word "mastelo" is the Greek name for the wooden bucket used to collect the milk.

You can use mastelo for a lot of different things, you can just fry it, make a super tasty sweet honey breadcrumb coating or use it for example for fillings. But I also want to present you one easy mastelo recipe – simply fried mastelo:

First the ingredients you need:

• mastelo
• flour
• egg
• salt
• pepper
• oil

The preparation:

• Cut the mastelo into 1 cm thick slices
• Pass the slices through the squirreled egg and the flour and make a coat
• Fry the mastelo with some oil in a pan
• Put the mastelo after frying for one or two minutes onto a paper towel
• Serve the mastelo with lemon juice and fresh tomatoes
• The recipe also works without flour and egg, by just frying the mastelo

Enjoy your meal, καλή όρεξη (kali orexi), like the Greek say.