I recently added a post for Maltese Cheese (gbejniet) but I didn’t include the recipe for drying the cheese and preserving it. Here it is!
Drying the cheese can be tricky in colder climates or when the weather is not behaving itself. The higher the temperature the better, as it will only take a few days for the cheese to dry. It took me over a week to dry my cheese and it still was not as hard as my nanna used to dry them. According to my mum, nanna, used to dry them “bhal gebel” (like rocks). I just dried my cheese indoors and outside one afternoon when it was warmish. You could dry them with a radiator or heater nearby too to quicken the process.
My nanna used to have a special cage looking ‘thingy’ that was used to dry the cheese. It was just a wooden frame which had a few shelves and was covered in wired mesh to prevent any insects getting through. Most of us these days won’t have anything like this and so the closest thing is a food net which you can find easily.
Once the cheese is dried, all you do is soak in vinegar overnight (I used white vinegar but any vinegar is fine). Remove this vinegar the following day. In the same jar add some vinegar, olive oil and cracked black pepper (optional but it is the way I like them best).
In my personal opinion, the best way to eat this cheese on a warm day is with slices of watermelon. I still remember helping my dad pick watermelon by rolling them a few meters so that he could put them in bins. My brother and I used to ‘accidentally’ drop one or two now and again. We used to just dig in with our hands. Yum, yum!
- Fresh Maltese cheese (gbejniet) which has been sitting in the fridge for 24 hours
- Salt
- Food net
- Glass jar
- Cracked black pepper
- Vinegar
- Olive oil
- Get your gbejniet and dip in salt to prevent the cheese from spoiling.
- Put in a dish or place on a plate and cover with a food net.
- Dry as desired. My cheese took a week and a half to dry indoors.
- Once dry place in a container and cover with vinegar. Place in the fridge overnight.
- Obtain your gbeniet and dip in cracked black pepper.
- Place in a jar and add vinegar and olive oil (two tablespoons each is all that is required).
- Continually turn jar to cover the gbejniet in olive oil and vinegar.
- Store in cupboard.