Greek Cheese & Honey Cheesecake: Melopita

This Greek cheesecake is called "honey pie," "μελοπιτα" (Melopita) in Greek, and it seems to have originated on the Aegean island of Sifnos, although there are other similar versions in Greece, especially on other Aegean islands, and some of the recipes use the cheese mixture as a filling for a pie crust. Instead of using one larger baking dish, I used some 5 inch pie pans when I made the Melopita for this article. Ricotta cheese is a highly suitable substitute for some of the similar Greek cheeses used to make Melopita, but which are not always easily obtained elsewhere.  

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups ricotta cheese
1 1/2 tablespoons flour
2 eggs
1/3 cup honey
1/4 teaspoon thyme leaves
1 heaping tablespoon finely grated lemon zest
(for serving) ground cinnamon + honey

Crush the thyme leaves into fine particles. Mix together the ricotta, flour, eggs, honey, finely ground thyme leaves and lemon zest. Mix until smooth (I just use a hand mixer). Butter a baking dish, pie pan(s), or cake pan. Preheat oven to 350 F. Bake about 50 minutes or until the top is lightly browned. Allow to cool, then drizzle with some honey and sprinkle on some cinnamon.

In the top two photos, I inverted the small tart pan to remove the Melopita

In this photo, I removed the Melopita straight out of the tart pan (you can see the lightly browned top beneath the honey and cinnamon ... 

One of the Melopita still in the pie pan ...

WORD HISTORY:
Abyss (Abysm)-The ultimate origin of this word is uncertain, and it "may" not be Indo European. Transliterated Ancient Greek had "byssós," which meant, "deep area, bottom." This was then given the prefix "a," which in Greek meant "no, not, without;" thus, the transliterated noun "abyssos," meaning, "bottomless pit," which was also used adjectivally ("bottomless, boundless, unfathomable"). Latin borrowed the word as "abyssus" (bottomless pit) and English borrowed the word circa 1400, meaning "depths of the sea," but also in the context of creation, "vast chaos." Latin "abyssus" also produced "abyssimus," seemingly a superlative form meaning, "of the greatest depths," and the figurative, "utterly terrible, awful, 'abysmal' "). This passed to Old French as a noun, "abisme," meaning, "the greatest depths of the Earth," and also used to mean, "Hell." This was borrowed by English from French in the early 1300s as "abysm" meaning, "the greatest depths of Earth, bottomless pit." In common usage it was overtaken by its close relative with the spelling "abyss," but "abysm" remained around in poetry and high style writings, although it now seems to be a rarity indeed.      

Mexican Rice Drink: Horchata

"Horchata," pronounced as if, "ore-chahtah," with the "ch" pronounced liked the "ch" of Charles, was taken to Spain by the Moors of northern Africa,* and the drink became well established in the Valencia region, where it eventually spread throughout much of Spain. The Moors and the Spaniards used "tiger nuts" ** to make the drink, a tradition that has continued to this day. Spanish colonizers took the drink along to Spain's vast colonial realm where it also caught on in various places. Instead of tiger nuts, people in the Spanish colonies brought about the use of a number of substitute ingredients for the preparation of Horchata, including in Mexico, where rice, sometimes mixed with almonds, became the common substitute, and it has remained so right up to the present.  

Ingredients:

1 cup uncooked white rice
2 cinnamon sticks
1/2 to 2/3 cup sugar (I found 2/3 cup to be too sweet, but you may prefer the sweeter taste)
5 cups cold water
1 12 ounce can evaporated milk
2 teaspoons vanilla
(optional) little pinch of ground cinnamon to garnish each serving

Put rice, cold water and cinnamon sticks into a blender. Blend for about 1 minute, until the cinnamon sticks are broken up, but this will be strained, so don't worry about getting this totally ground up. Cover and set the mixture in the refrigerator for 8 to 10 hours. Get a pitcher and a fine sieve. Strain the mixture into the pitcher. Dispose of the strained solids. Add the milk, the vanilla and the sugar, stir well to dissolve the sugar. Serve in glasses filled with ice cubes. If you'd like, you can dust the top of each serving with a little ground cinnamon, and then you can play James Taylor's, "Mexico" .... "Ohhhhh, Mexico...It sounds so simple, I just got to go..."

* The Moors were a Berber people of northern and western Africa who formed the vast bulk of Muslim invaders of the Iberian Peninsula beginning in the 700s.

** "Tiger nuts" are not really nuts at all, but rather they are small round parts of the root system of a plant called "yellow nutsedge." 

WORD HISTORY:
Cull-This is the verb, as the noun is not in common usage. It is related to "collect," a word of Latin derivation borrowed by English. "Cull" goes back to Indo European "leg," which had the notion "to gather, to collect, to pick;" thus also, "select, choose." This gave Latin "lego," which meant "select, appoint," which produced the verb "legere," meaning, "to gather, to collect." It was given a prefix from Indo European "kom," which meant, "near, by, with," and which took on various forms in Latin, including, "col," which meant, "together with." The two parts gave Latin, "colligere," which meant, "to gather together, to collect together." This passed into Old French as "cuiller/cuiler," with the meaning, "to gather, to collect, to select." This was borrowed by English in the mid 1300s as "cuilen," which then became "cullen," meaning, "to choose something from a large number to gather into a select group." The meaning "to select a number of animals for killing to avoid overpopulation" seems to have developed in the first half of the 1900s.