The rubbery, white Cypriot cheese known as halloumi in Greek and hellim in Turkish is without a doubt the island’s most famous culinary delicacy. Served grilled or fried, it has long been popular at tables in Athens, Istanbul and around the region. As demand from Western Europe and even North America has increased in the last decade, exports have shot up. But a new law regulating what goes into the cheese threatens to throw the industry into turmoil.
A recent mandate by the Greek Cypriot government that halloumi contain at least 51% goat and sheep milk – in keeping with traditional practices – has raised the ire of large-scale producers, some of whom had been using mostly cow’s milk. As The Wall Street Journal reports:
Most Cypriots agree that, traditionally, halloumi was made from sheep and goat milk, since there were few cows on the island until they were brought over by the British in the 20th century. But as demand grew, industrial cheesemakers began pouring more of the cheaper and more-plentiful cow’s milk into their caldrons.
That development has curdled the tempers of traditional halloumi producers. “Supermarket halloumi is for poor people,” sneers Androulla Kostouri, a small artisanal cheesemaker. “If you fry it, it gets stuck in the pan.”
Meanwhile, Turkish Cypriots on the divided island are pressing the European Union to grant Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status to the cheese under not only the name “halloumi” but also as “hellim,” as Culinary Backstreets’ Yigal Schleifer described in a recent post for EurasiaNet.
The full WSJ article can be found here.
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