‘hard cheese',
an expression meaning that you have no sympathy for someone, but literally here is the hardest cheese in the world, Chhurpi or Durkha is
a traditional Nepalese cheese that has been a means of survival or many remote
communities for centuries. Made out of the milk of yaks, or chauri (the cross
of a yak and a cow), chhurpi comes in two varieties – soft and hard. The soft
stuff is usually consumed as a side dish with rice, as filling for traditional
dumplings, or ever as a soup. But it’s the hard variety that makes chhurpi
famous all over the world. You may think you’ve tried hard cheeses before this
Nepalese staple puts them all to shame. It’s as hard as a rock, so you can’t
even bite into it for at least an hour or so, photograph Krish
Dulal/Wikimedia Commons,
you need to soften it up before you even try
chewing it. Most people keep it in their mouths for hours, regularly chewing on
the outer layers as they gradually soften. Munching through a small block of
chhurpi the size of a toffee candy can take as long as two hours, and the
amazing thing is that the cheese maintains its flavor during all that time, so
you can chew on them like chewing gum before swallowing them, eating a small
block of chhurpi sounds more like a chore, but the cheese’s high protein
content have ensured Nepalese communities survival in the country’s harsh
mountainous environment for centuries, so it’s an important part of the
culture. You can find it in nearly every small market at extremely affordable prices
(around 4 UK pence per cube), as an aside because it’s so high in protein and so
hard to chew through, hard chhurpi has become a popular dog treat in many parts
of the world, hard cheese? try chhurpi!
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