Monday, 6 April 2020

I Have Often Heard The Phrase,

‘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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