Anthotyro

Anthotyro is a fresh whey cheese made much as mizithra is, from the whey left over from sheep and goat cheese production with milk added back to it. The name means flower cheese, and the fresh version is softer and milder than mizithra, with little or no salt in it. Crete, the Cyclades and the Ionian islands each make their own, and Crete's is the best known.

Fresh anthotyro is used the way ricotta is used elsewhere: folded into pie fillings, spread on bread with honey poured over it, or put on the table with fruit at the end of a meal. The dried form, anthotyro xero, is salted and left to harden for months until it can be grated, and in Crete that is the standard grating cheese over a plate of pasta.

It is interchangeable with fresh mizithra in nearly every recipe, and the two are often sold beside each other and chosen on whichever looks fresher. Outside Greece, well-drained ricotta is the workable substitute. The fresh cheese keeps only a few days and sours quickly after that, so it is worth buying in the quantity a recipe actually needs.