Beneath the canopy of a fading sun, I was lightly dribbling. Such an early flight: 5am. It meant I had hardly slept, and so when the opportunity of a massage presented itself upon arriving at my hotel on the north-west coast of Greece, I took it. The masseuse had to wake me. It’s likely that I had been snoring too.
This was in a lesser-visited, agricultural part of Greece. In the mountains inland, feta is one of the local economy’s finest products.
The jumpy and famous islands to the south of Athens, where yachts carry vices of every description and Gucci handbags are used as buoys, it is not. I was visiting an area just south of Perdika, a stretch of coastline just below Albania that looks out into the Ionian Sea.
Across the waves is Corfu to the north, Paxos to the south – a bougie locale, yes, but far calmer, less vain. And more remote. People mostly just hit octopus against rocks and drink small beers against the soundtrack of crickets.
My massage, as far as I could tell, was enjoyable. Afterwards, I became hungry. But in the heat, drained, something light: a watermelon and feta salad. This with a snappy Greek white wine that wasn’t really decent but served its purpose. I should think it was an old recipe that had been gracefully continued.
My salad was good, the brine of the feta hardy against the watermelon; fresh, perfumed mint leaves, olive oil and lemon juice, nothing more. Feta (more on less chartered and more intriguing Greek cheeses soon) has become one of the mainstays of dining in Britain, but there is always an element of the Provence rose paradox, where regular food items taste far better in their native surroundings. Feta can be boring in the UK, relied on too heavily when constructing salads, cubed and oregano-clad up to the hilt and probably the worst of it.
Perhaps it is its sharp rise in popularity this past decade. Recent figures up to 2019 show that exports of feta to Britain were up 214%. At stalling intervals in 2021 and 2022, due to fluctuating milk prices in Greece, transit complications and a viral TikTok recipe for baked feta pasta, there were shortages. The UK remains the second-biggest foreign market after Germany. The likes of feta and French brie are gaining on cheddar.
Is it surprising? Feta has been finely tuned for millennia. In ancient Greece, the earliest mention of cheesemaking might be found in Homer’s Odyssey. Cyclops Polyphemus, the bodybuilding one-eyed son of Poseidon, is said to have carried milk around in sheep’s stomachs, only to find one day that the liquid had curdled into a solid, and the result was a tasty morsel – something ideal for comforting and easy salads.
This one, from the chef Adam Wood at Garden House restaurant in Cambridge, also calls for pickled ginger, sesame seeds and cashew nuts, making for a more immediate and deliberate dish. It works as a refreshing aside to a barbecue, sun willing, or a main course, even. The only real consideration is finding top-tier feta, because doing so is worthwhile.
Watermelon and feta salad
Serves 1 (multiply for more diners)
Ingredients:
300g watermelon
75g feta cheese
20g pomegranate seeds
10g baby watercress
10g cashew nuts
3g pickled ginger
2g sesame seeds
2g mint
Ponzu dressing:
60ml soy sauce
60ml maple syrup
60ml rice wine vinegar
12ml lime juice
25ml sesame oil
5g fresh red chilli
8g pickled ginger
¼ bunch of chives
1 cucumber, diced
Method:
Mix all the salad ingredients together in a bowl, leaving out the mint and watercress.
Combine all the ingredients for the ponzu dressing.
Dress the salad with the ponzu dressing and garnish with mint and watercress, tearing both roughly.
