🧀 Kashkaval

Kashkaval is a yellow pasta filata cheese of the Balkans, traditionally made from sheep's milk. It is a hard cheese with a natural rind, and its smooth, fibrous, sliceable texture comes from scalding and stretching the curd. Its production is traced back to the 11th and 12th centuries. ¹

In British and American shops kashkaval sits among Balkan and Middle Eastern cheeses, and the word alone tells you neither the milk nor the country. Only the EU protects two specific kinds. Caşcaval de Săveni, from Botoşani county in Romania, is made from cow's milk and ripens for at least 60 days at 2–8 °C. ² Kashkavali Pindou, from the Pindus mountains in Greece, is made from sheep's milk, sometimes mixed with goat's milk. ³

The best-documented traditional method comes from Galichnik and Lazaropole on Mount Bistra in North Macedonia. Raw sheep's milk is renneted at 33–38 °C, the curd is cut with a wooden tool called a krstach, pressed for 3–6 hours under 12–15 kg per kilo of curd and left to sour until its pH falls to about 5.2–5.4. ¹

The soured curd, called baskija, is sliced into thin strips, lowered in a wooden basket into hot brine of 5 % salt at 73–75 °C for about five minutes and stretched by hand, the hardest work of the day. The plastic mass is kneaded for 10–15 minutes, salted, pressed into moulds and pricked with needles to let the air out. ¹

Over the next 20–30 days each wheel is dry-salted five to seven times, then brushed in warm water and dried. Then comes the step particular to Bistra: the wheels are laid in the sun for 10–15 minutes on each side, until the surface softens and beads of fat appear. After about three months of ripening they are flattened cylinders of 3–3.5, 5–6 or 8–9 kg, usually vacuum-packed. ¹

The cheese changes clearly with age. In kashkaval from Galichnik, moisture falls over a year from about 46 % to 28 %, while protein rises from 12 % to 28 % and fat from 21 % to 31 %. ¹

Mount Bistra supplies an unusual raw material: pastures where grasses make up about 49 % of the flora, legumes 12 % and aromatic plants 19 %, grazed in summer at around 1,500 m. ¹