Kyrgyz cheese spread “Olga”
Wednesday, 5. March 2008, 17:37:35
Cheese spread just done, with some freshly grated pepper
On my first trip in Kyrgyzstan, our cook was Olga, a spontaneous ethnic Russian Kyrgyz girl with a mass of black curls and a lovely voice … she loved to sing and would forever ask us to sing Dutch songs which was embarrassing since we hardly have a “song” culture any more.
Kyrgyzstan, being scarcely populated by a largely nomadic population, has a lot of dairy products, and Olga made good use of it. We were supposed to help out with cooking, and one of the first days she had us all grating cheese, and peeling garlic and putting the cloves through a garlic press. When she judged we'd made enough, she disappeared with it, and the next morning, with our breakfast, bowls with what I can only call “cheese spread” appeared on the table, to be put on our bread. Everyone loved it, so we begged Olga again and again to have more of it.
We never found out exactly what went in it (apart from our grated cheese and garlic … goat cream? mare's milk cream?), but at home I experimented until I had something that came very close. Here's what you need:
- 125 or 200ml Sour cream (creme fraiche)
- 125-220g Finely grated “strong” cheese, like old Gouda or a tasty Italian cheese
- A few cloves of garlic
- Some freshly-ground pepper to taste
You can make as much as you like, but the proportion works like this: you need about an equal number of grams of cheese (or a little bit more) as you have milliliters of sour cream. The cheese should really be finely grated; if it comes as long slivers, try making it finer first: the finer it is, the better it mixes with the cream. Then you need (at least) one big clove of garlic for every 100ml of cream.
First put your sour cream in a bowl or deep dish. Then peel your garlic cloves, and put them through the press above the cream, and mix it through. Then gradually add your grated cheese, in batches, stirring in each batch until it is evenly mixed, until you have enough cheese mixed in that the cream is no longer fluid but forms a firm mass with the cheese. If you like, grate a little pepper on it … I like using “four season pepper”, a mixture of four types of peppercorns.
Kyrgyz cheese spread on dark whole wheat bread
This batch was made with a 200ml cup of sour cream and a little over 200g of grated cheese, a mixture of mostly Gouda and a bit left-over Italian. Very good on black rye bread or a coarse whole-wheat bread — and don't spread it too thinly!
Images link to the full-size version in the Concoctions album.
