Wednesday, July 27, 2016

A cheese made from… donkey milk?

Slobodan Simić lounged on the crude wooden bench in Zasavica Special Nature Reserve’s dining room like the caterpillar from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, holding court and puffing on the quarter-bent Calabash-style briar pipe that dangled delicately from his teeth. Tanned creases ran down his face like tributaries, and his eyes sparkled with mischief.

“Rakia?” he said, offering me a shot of the strong Balkan brandy that is often drunk in the morning, even before coffee.

“Ne, hvala,” I replied, shaking my head and thanking him. Instead, I accepted a cup of thick Turkish coffee accompanied by a shot glass of donkey milk from Zasavica’s herd. It was my first time tasting the sweet milk; I was even more eager to try the donkey cheese, a delicacy I’d learned about a few years back when rumours swirled that Serbian tennis ace Novak Djokovic was buying up their entire stock for his restaurants. Although the rumours were untrue, they brought global attention to Zasavica – and Serbia.

Despite being a nature lover, Simić never set out to create a farm. Twenty years ago, the former MP-turned-conservationist remembered that he’d heard about some wetlands in west-central Serbia. His ex-wife’s parents, who lived in a nearby village, took him to see them.

“I fell in love immediately,” he said. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Swiss continue to scoff more cheese...
  2. Why Mozzarella is the worst cheese there is...
  3. Italian company creates halal mozzarella...
  4. Indian farmers wary of European cheese...
  5. Say cheese! A look at Swiss cheese-making...
  6. New York chef makes cheese ... with wife's breast milk!!!
  7. Swiss Alps Cheese-making, just like 300 years ago...
  8. Singly, where they make cheese from human breast milk!!!

No comments:

Post a Comment