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buried cheese | gubta mtumarta

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My grandmother and I recently went about solving a cheese mystery. On her family‘s farm in north-eastern Syria, they would make a homemade cheese that they would bury under ground in clay pots. They called the cheese gubta mtumarta, which means “buried cheese” in Assyrian. The name tells you more about the way it’s stored, rather than giving any hint of the kinds of cheeses used, which didn’t help us much in backwards engineering her family’s recipe. But luckily, we had some information to go on, and we headed over to the Whole Foods cheese section to try to get to the bottom of things.

We knew that her family’s gubta mtumarta involved caraway seeds and some combination of three cheeses crumbled together. She remembered the method of preparation really well and remembered lots of details about the cheeses they would use, but it’s really difficult to figure out what cheeses to buy at a supermarket cheese counter in order to best emulate the flavors and textures of farm-made, unnamed Syrian cheeses.

Here was the information we had: The first cheese tasted like feta, but without the brine. It was a not-too-salty, medium-soft cheese that added a creamy texture to the mix, but without adding too much moisture. It bound the crumbly, hard cheeses together. The second cheese was a lot like parmesan–very salty, dry, and crumbly. The third cheese was similarly crumbly, but not quite as salty or hard, with a subtler flavor. The two harder cheeses would get ground up into little pieces and mixed together with the creamier cheese to form a crumbly paste. The harder cheeses would add enough salt to help preserve the softer one and the whole paste would get mixed together with caraway seeds to add a really lovely, distinct flavor that most Americans associate with rye bread.

We chose three Mediterranean cheeses for our recipe for gubta mtumarta. For the first, soft cheese, we chose manouri cheese, which is similar to feta, but without the brine and strong feta flavor. The second cheese was easy, since parmesan was the obvious choice. For the third cheese, we found a hard, aged provolone piccante with a little less salt than parmesan and a slightly higher moisture content.

We minced the cheeses finely and combined them with the caraway, and when she tried the finished product she said that she couldn’t wait to deliver some to her brother, Badel, because it was exactly like the gubta mtumarta that she remembered. While I never tried the gubta from their farm, I can confirm that this recipe is beyond delicious spread on toast, melted on a burger, sprinkled on biryani, or added to tabbouleh. On Easter, Yemmah Sourma would put a little cheese in the center of one of the samooneh before baking the rolls, and whichever kid got the cheesy samoon got an extra little gift for Easter. But if you ask me, getting the only samoon full of gubta mtumarta is a gift in itself.

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buried cheese | gubta mtumarta

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Ingredients

2.5 ounces parmigiano reggiano (or another hard, salty cheese, like pecorino romano)
4 ounces provolone piccante (or another sharp, somewhat salty cheese, like an aged asiago)
5 ounces manouri (or another soft, mild, crumbly cheese, like ricotta salata or a mild feta)
1 tablespoon caraway seeds

Instructions

  1. Mince the parmigiano reggiano and the provolone piccante (or other cheeses, if using) by hand or with a food processor. Don’t over-process the hard cheeses–there should be some crumbles that are the size of grains of rice and some the size of grains of sand.
  2. Once the hard cheeses have been ground up, crumble in the manouri (or other cheese, if using) and combine just until everything comes together into a coarse paste.
  3. Stir in the caraway seeds and store the cheese in a jar in the refrigerator. The length of time you can store the gubta will vary, depending on the kind of cheese you’re using, but with the three listed above, you can count on at least a week.

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samoon

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In the United States, Middle Eastern bread is almost always very flat. Pita and lawash have become so ubiquitous, you can always find one or the other in any major American supermarket. And I would never complain about this flatbread craze, since these breads are undeniably delicious. But all this is enough to make a person think that pita and lawash are the only two kinds of Middle Eastern bread, which is of course not the case. My family eats, bakes, and buys a variety of different Middle Eastern breads. But when one of us requests some “bread” without specifying which type, you can assume they mean samoon.

While samoon is primarily known as an Iraqi bread, it’s eaten in many different parts of the Middle East and Mediterranean. And with such a broad reach, samoon varies from place to place and doesn’t always look and taste exactly the same.

The market my family shops at in Chicago carries a version that’s very much like this recipe. But you’ll also find places with bigger seedless loaves that are cooked at a higher temperature and become slightly charred instead of golden.

Some versions of samoon even look almost like flatbread. Each variety is unique and absolutely delicious, but the thing that unites them all is their pointed oval shape. If you’re not one of the lucky ones who lives near a samoon bakery, you can use this recipe to make your own. But even if you have a samoon shop near you, nothing beats homemade bread.

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samoon

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  • Yield: 12 rolls

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 teaspoons dry active yeast
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • 1 1/3 cups + 3 tablespoons tepid water, measured separately
  • 5 ounces wheat flour (about 1 cup)
  • 14 ounces white flour (about 3 cups)
  • 1 tablespoon yogurt or buttermilk
  • 2 tablespoons butter, melted
  • 1 1/2 teaspoon fine salt
  • 1/4 c corn meal or semolina flour
  • Additional water for brushing
  • 2 tablespoons sesame seeds, for sprinkling

Instructions

  1. Proof the active dry yeast with the sugar and 1 1/3 cups of the water until the water looks a little foamy on top (about 5-10 minutes).
  2. Add the wheat flour, white flour, yogurt, melted butter, and salt to a bowl (the bowl of a stand mixer, if you plan to knead by machine).
  3. Add the water/yeast/sugar mixture and stir until the dough starts to come together. If there is still a lot of flour or if the dough looks dry, gradually add 1 tablespoon of water at a time. The dough should be on the wet side; the dough ball should be a bit sticky, but it should hold together in a ball.
  4. Knead until the dough ball passes the window pane test. It should come together into a somewhat sticky elastic ball that has a smooth surface. Kneading should take about 5-15 minutes by machine with a dough hook, or 10-20 minutes by hand. Pay more attention to the dough’s consistency than the time you’ve spent kneading.
  5. Place the dough in a bowl, cover it, and let it rise at room temperature for about 1 hour and 30 minutes. It will rise noticeably. If it’s a little chilly in your kitchen (e.g., below 67° F), you might need to let it rise for about 15-30 minutes longer.
  6. Lightly flour a clean, food-safe work surface, divide the dough into 12 equal pieces, and shape each chunk into a round ball.
  7. Roll each ball into an elongated shape, sort of like a long football (see photo above). The ends should be a bit pointy. After you roll it into this shape, slightly flatten the football shaped piece with the heel of your hand. Pinch the ends of the football into points if they’ve become rounded.
  8. Sprinkle 1 or 2 sheet pans with corn meal or semolina and place the shaped loaves on the sheet pans, leaving a couple inches between each one.
  9. Brush each loaf with water and sprinkle with sesame seeds.
  10. Cover the loaves with plastic wrap and preheat the oven to 475° F.
  11. Once the oven has preheated and the loaves have risen for 30 minutes, bake them for 12-18 minutes, until they’re cooked all the way through and golden-brown on the outside.
  12. Cool on a wire rack.

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