Thursday, July 31, 2008

Greek Fasting 'Cheese' and a blunt knife, or: The Toastie Postie


So here is my first foodie post, and appropriately it is a simple (as befits my capabilities) toastie.

I first bought some Greek fasting 'cheese' from the Hellenic Deli at the Queen Vic Markets in June, and promptly left it in a hotel fridge, uneaten and greatly mourned. Finally last weekend I got down there again, and lo and behold, not only was there the cheddar-style I bought last time, but also a feta. I bought both, of course.


The feta was very salty and pretty darn close to the dairy version. It would be almost undetectable in a salad or sprinkled on top of something (undetectable except for the lack of prickings of your conscience, that is).

The cheddar was much more soy-like, but I think better than Cheezly for its spongey texture.

I accessorised my fabulous cheese with the following:

2 pieces of Pott's sourdough bread
Nuttelex
Truss tomatoes
Fresh coriander
Fresh chilli


I had to admit some semi-defeat when the time came to cut the toastie. At my workplace the only knives are in the dishwasher if they're not blunt. As I hacked through the toastie, sawing and poking and jabbing, I reminded myself to bring a proper knife next time, if not just to make a prettier toastie,then to save me the sweat and rage.


... and here was the result:

Sweeeeet!

It was totally delicious despite the hacksaw job on the slicing. The cheese was semi-solid (and I had cut very hefty chunks) and salty, and lost a lot of the soy aftertaste in the raw version which I'm not so keen on.









The coriander was a great accompaniment to the fresh tomatoes and salty cheese.















The best bit was when a piece of cheese that had fallen onto the grill came out all lovely and golden...


I'm thinking vegan saganaki.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Rachel I think the food you eat
and write about is womderful.
My name is Hugh I live in Melbourne too, Im not vegan because I have cow milk in my coffee & tea but appart from that
dont have dairy products in my food
as much as I can avoid doig so.
I saw you eat vegimite and wanted to inform
you that I looked at the ingredients recently and it has dary product in it sorry to inform you of this.
Best Regards Hugh

Miss T said...

Hi Hugh,
Thanks for your comment and I'm glad you like the food. I'm a bit confused by the Vegemite thing though- could you please let me know which ingredient is dairy? The new type of Vegemite, the infamous iSnack 2.0, has cream cheese in it, but I have never heard of vegans who don't eat original Vegemite. I always use the original (and in fact I wrote this post long before the new type came out!).
Cheers, Rachel

Unknown said...

Hey just to be aware - Kolios Fasting Cheeses contain casein which is animal sourced - this company has got it wrong. Unfortunately some people are allergic to casein which is an animal product.

Miss T said...

Thanks for your comment Paul. I think if you read on a few
posts, I also discover that Kolios is not vegan, much to my chagrin. I haven't eaten Kolios since this post, back in ... 2008? I noticed another blogger had just sought more confirmation via facebook so I wonder if that brought you here!
Cheers, Rachel