Manteiga Cheese

Literally “butter cheese”, this is a classic cheese of the Northeast region made with cow’s milk and produced mainly in the states of Pernambuco, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba and Bahia. This cooked curd cheese shaped into blocks is made without the addition of rennet, which renders a fatty yellow cheese, with soft and elastic texture. There is a variation that includes the “rapa” − the scrapes that stick to the bottom of the pan and brown as the cheese is being cooked. Manteiga cheese is used in a traditional Brazilian recipe, Cartola: fried banana topped with melted manteiga cheese, sugar and cinnamon.