Halloumi PDO from Cyprus

TAST­ING NOTES FROM THE CURATOR

Unique­ly pre­pared with­out the use of any acid-pro­duc­ing bac­te­ria, Hal­lou­mi has a firm, lay­ered tex­ture sim­i­lar to moz­zarel­la and feta, but with a strong salty fla­vor from the brine. It has no rind, and is a very bright white col­or, with a strong aroma. 

Eat­en on its own, it has a tangy, salty taste. But Hal­lou­mi is a pop­u­lar cheese to cook, and doing so removes the salti­ness and gives it a bril­liant creamy tex­ture. It is usu­al­ly pack­aged gar­nished with mint, a throw­back to tra­di­tion, when the cheese would be wrapped in mint leaves to make it pos­si­ble to store it for long peri­ods with the island’s hot climate.

PAIR­INGS AND PREPARATION

On its own, this Mediter­ranean cheese is won­der­ful. But cooked, it shines its bright­est. Since it has a high melt­ing point, it is usu­al­ly grilled (like for sagana­ki) or fried. You can cut it length­wise instead, wrap it in bacon, and fry it — an easy fin­ger food to serve guests for appetizers!

One pop­u­lar sum­mer dish is grilled Hal­lou­mi with slices or chunks of water­mel­on, whether as a sal­ad or a light kebab. It is also an essen­tial part of a Cyprus meze, where it is incred­i­ble paired with a cold beer. Stuff it between two pieces of sour­dough, with toma­to slices, some hon­ey, but­ter, and haris­sa, and you have your­self an incred­i­ble sandwich.

On that vein, ele­vate your burg­ers by replac­ing your processed cheese squares with slices of Halloumi.

ISLAND PRIDE

The mak­ing of Hal­lou­mi is such an inte­gral and proud part of the island of Cyprus. Farm­ers relied on the Mediter­ranean cheese as an impor­tant source of pro­tein, and entire vil­lages would come togeth­er to make huge batch­es of Halloumi. 

It was a com­mu­ni­ty effort. Recipes dif­fered with each vil­lage, each tak­ing pride in their own tech­niques and ingre­di­ents. But its impor­tance to vil­lage life remained con­stant. So much so that many Cypri­ot fam­i­ly names, like Hal­lumas, Hal­luma and Hal­lumakis, echo their role in its production.

Storage Instructions

Cheeses (except brined ones in jars) should be stored in the crisper or the but­ter draw­er of a refrig­er­a­tor, not on the shelves them­selves. This is to help reg­u­late their tem­per­a­ture and humid­i­ty lev­els — and pre­vents the for­ma­tion of mold. Once opened, they should not be kept in their orig­i­nal pack­ag­ing. Semi-hard cheeses (includ­ing blues) should ide­al­ly be wrapped in cheese paper after open­ing. An alter­na­tive is to wrap them tight­ly in parch­ment paper to allow them to breathe, then loose­ly in alu­minum foil to keep mois­ture out. Don’t for­get to write up a label with the date you first opened the pack­age. Replace the parch­ment paper every time you open the cheese, and it will be fine for up to one month, unless oth­er­wise indi­cat­ed on best before date.