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Smile and say HaloumiJeri QuinzioWhen I told people I was going to Cyprus, most said “Where’s that?” One assumed I meant Cypress Gardens in Florida. Cyprus, an island country in the Mediterranean, near Egypt, Greece and Turkey, is a major tourist destination for the British and Germans, but not for Americans. That’s a shame because Cyprus has something for nearly every vacationer. Miles of wonderful beaches for those who want sun, sand and surf. Ruins including an ancient Greek amphitheater overlooking the Mediterranean for lovers of history and archeology. Churches, monasteries and museums with ancient frescoes, golden icons and stunning mosaics for art lovers. Most of all, it has terrific food. If you travel to eat, Cyprus is your kind of place. My traveling companions and I typically spent two to three hours at dinner, sampling course after course of mezes, small plates of Cypriot food, and drinking the local wines. Most dinners started with wonderful, freshly baked breads and what we came to call “the trinity”: tahini, a sesame, olive oil and lemon juice spread; taramasalata, a spread made from fish roe, bread, potatoes, oil and lemon; and tsatsiki, a yogurt, cucumber and mint combo also known as raita. The dishes were the same, yet different every time. We tasted a little more mint in one, a little less roe in another, more or less lemon or oil. The breads also varied. There was pita bread in one place, sesame-crusted wheat bread in another. Greek salads, too, were slightly different from place to place. There was feta cheese on some, none on others, cabbage in some, more or fewer olives. The mezes that followed the salad were less predictable. We had delectable a dish of eggs scrambled with wild greens just once, although I could have eaten it every day. Rabbit stew, sun-dried goat’s meat, cauliflower salad and fresh trout are among the other dishes that we had just once. We often had eggplant, but it was always cooked a little differently. We had potatoes topped with crushed coriander a few times, and I plan to have it often now that I’m home. I don’t mean to imply that the limited variety was boring. On the contrary, the subtle differences made us feel like connoisseurs after just a few meals. Tasting similar dishes prepared by different cooks is like hearing the same music performed by different musicians. You recognize the melody, and begin to appreciate the variations in tone and orchestration. It’s not long before you develop definite preferences. Nowhere was this more true than with the local cheese – haloumi. We had haloumi often, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We tasted it plain and made with mint. Sometimes it was grilled; often it was not. Occasionally, it was too salty. It was used as a stuffing for ravioli as well as a grated topping. It was in the filling of the sweet Easter pastry called flaouna. It was ubiquitous. So when we had a chance to watch it being made, we jumped at it.
These days, haloumi is also made in modern factories, but the process of hand-crafting it hasn’t changed in years. The cheese can be made with goat’s or sheep’s milk or a combination of the two. In Louvaras, it’s made with goat’s milk since that’s what they have. To make the cheese, Litsa heats the milk in a waist-high metal container over an open flame, stirring it continuously. She adds rennet to make it curdle. As the curds form, Litsa cuts through them and scoops them out with a sieve, puts them on a draining board, presses them into discs and puts them in small plastic containers with ridges that mimic the look of the straw or reed baskets they were traditionally shaped in. She rinses them with water to keep them clean and white. Then, she drains them and cooks them again in the whey with a little water added. Factory-made haloumi doesn’t receive this second cooking, so it tends to be rubbery, according to Litsa. After they’re cooked, she takes them out and flips them onto the table. Now the discs are larger and softer than when they went into the whey an hour or so before. They’re about the size of individual pita breads. She layers them atop each other to flatten them slightly. Then she salts each one individually with coarse salt and folds it in half. She opens each one again and tucks a little dried mint inside. The mint will blacken if it’s sprinkled on the outside of the cheeses, so it’s always put inside. Next she stacks the folded disks in a large plastic container, filling it about ¾ full. She makes a brine with leftover whey, salt, mint and water, carefully tests the salt level with a hydrometer (the only modern equipment she uses), adjusts the salt and pours the brine over the cheese for storage. But watching the process isn’t the same as doing it. Litsa stirred the mixture with one hand, effortlessly tracing clean circles through it. So when she offered us a turn stirring it, I quickly volunteered. I just as quickly realized that stirring all that milk with one hand was not easy. My arm started aching almost immediately. The open flames and nearly boiling milk gave off waves of heat. I surrendered the stirrer to the next volunteer as soon as I could without losing face. Like all true pros, Litsa had made a difficult process look easy. In the middle of the process, as the first cheeses were draining, Litsa made another cheese, called anari, from the soft whey. As the whey boiled, she skimmed small crumbly curds off the surface, and scooped them into a large bowl for us to sample in its warm fresh state. Litsa told us that anari can also be dried so that it hardens “like stone,” and can be grated over pasta dishes. Litsa took the bowl of warm anari outside where other family members had readied a small feast for us in a courtyard surrounded by walnut trees and vividly colored flowers. On a round, cloth-covered table they had set out a coffee cake made with haloumi cheese and mint, homemade bread and an olive cake that, oddly enough, contained Sprite. There were tiny cups of strong, hot Cyprus coffee, glasses of fruit juice, and tiny liqueur glasses of zivania, the potent Cypriot spirit. To all of this, Litsa added the big bowl full of warm anari. Her mother prepared a serving for me. She spooned a little anari into a small bowl, added a couple of drops of orange flower water and a splash of carob syrup, and gave it a little stir. The creamy cheese tasted like warm, fresh ricotta. The flavorings added a hint of sweetness and the refreshing edge of bitterness of carob. The sunshine, the setting and the company compounded the pleasure. Eating fresh cheese in a sunny garden in Cyprus won’t make you think of Cypress Gardens. But it may call to mind the Garden of Eden. Cyprus encourages travelers to experience its agricultural and culinary heritage through agritours. Ours was organized by Events, part of the Louis Organization, and supervised by Eugenia Eftamandilou. You can e-mail her directly at Eugenia@lousigroup.com or Events at: events@louisgroup.com. Or visit web sites including www.cyprustourism.org or www.pio.gov.cyprus. Photograph by Agni Thurner. |
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We
went to the small village of Louvaras, where Litsa Cristoforou is the
local cheese-maker. We walked by her family’s gardens where beans,
lettuce, cucumbers and other vegetables were growing, and through a
courtyard full of flowers and herbs into the kitchen. There a tall,
dark-haired, dark-eyed young woman wearing a shirt with a CK logo – for
Cyprus in English and in Greek not for Calvin Klein -- stood stirring a
huge kettle of goat’s milk over an open flame. The goats themselves were
down the hall under the same roof.