The Second International Slow Food Cheese Bodrum Festival (2017)

Between 2 and 5 March, 2017, the second International Bodrum Cheese Festival took place with a wide variety of activities, tastings, and workshops. (Oh, and baby goats - see above!)
 
Local Bodrum restaurants, including our personal favorites Arka Pizza, Cafe Cafen, La Tapa, and Musto, featured special delicacies made with local cheeses to participate in the celebration of regional dairy products.
 
The festival reached out in particular to elementary and high school students who, with modern lifestyles, may never have been exposed to the cheese making process, assuming that cheddar drops from the heavens in a plastic package.
 
Cheesemakers and speakers from many regions of Turkey participated, and several cheesemakers demonstrated the exact process from raw milk to final product in a series of laboratory workshops. One of the highlights of the festival was to receive and host well known cheese-makers Samatris Dimitrios from the neighboring Greek Island of Kos.   Both the Greek and Turkish cheese-makers were fascinated with each others methods.
 
Unique cheeses included spicy Hatay Surke,  feta with Abomasum yeast, Circassian cheese and a Greek saganaki made from cheese marinated in red wine.
 
Southern Cross Blue Cruising was proud to be a volunteer in this event coordinating with Asli Mutlu, owner of Turkish Cooking Classes Bodrum.  Southern Cross Blue Cruising is not proud of the post-festival spike in cholesterol levels.
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