Kashkavali PindouΚασκαβάλι Πίνδου

Appearance & taste

Kashkavali Pindou is cylindrical or rectangular, cream-coloured to pale yellow and has no rind. The texture is firm and compact, elastic and without cracks, with few holes. The cheese contains 27 to 30 % fat, over 45 % in dry matter, and 25 to 28 % protein; the salt content is between 1.4 and 2 %.

The taste is buttery, slightly sour and slightly salty; according to the specification, this sets it apart from similar cheeses. The salty note comes from repeated dry salting, the butteriness from the fat-rich milk. The specification attributes the strong, mature aroma to volatile terpenes and aldehydes in the milk, which come from the aromatic plants and herbs of the mountain pastures. Unlike cheeses of the same name made from cow’s milk in other Balkan countries, it is made from sheep’s milk or sheep’s and goat’s milk.

Production

The milk comes from sheep and goat breeds that have long been kept in the area, extensively on pasture and fed with dried local plants in bad weather. It is sheep’s milk or a mixture with less than 35 % goat’s milk and has at least 6 % fat. For raw milk, the animals may not be milked for at least ten days after lambing. Only “traditional Greek rennet” may be added; milk powder, milk protein, colourings and preservatives are prohibited.

The milk is curdled raw or pasteurised. The curd is left to mature until the acidity is right, cut into strips and dipped into very hot water. It becomes as pliable as a dough and can be shaped in the water and on the cheese table. It then goes into the moulds, where the wheels set, and is frequently dry-salted. Milk production, cheesemaking and the first packing take place in the area.

Origin & history

The area comprises the whole region of Epirus, the regional units of Kastoria, Grevena and Kozani in Western Macedonia and Trikala and Karditsa in Thessaly. It is shaped by the Pindus, the largest mountain range in Greece, and is rich in pastureland but hardly suitable for other arable farming. Winters are cold with frequent snow, summers cool, with 600 to 800 mm of rainfall a year. In the mountains grow forests of fir, beech, chestnut, oak and plane; 2,012 wild plant taxa have been recorded, many of them endemic.

The Aromanian-speaking transhumant herders (Vlachs) curdled the milk straight away in summer in the mountains, where there were no cheese dairies, cut the curd into slices and carried it on horses down to the lowlands. There it was worked with hot water and matured; the hot water also made raw or soured milk usable. According to the specification, this is where the name comes from: from Aromanian, “kashkaval” means roughly “cheese transported by horses”. Written records go back more than 150 years, for example a story by Alexandros Papadiamantis from 1892. Today pasteurised milk is used and the cheese is labelled and packed; otherwise the traditional method has stayed the same.