Laban and Loubnan

This story begins with a wedding. Ezzat Majed, a grandfather, is proud that he only had to leave his beloved Chouf Mountains once in his 85 years of life, and that was to buy a suit for his wedding many years ago. He and his cousin went down to Beirut; one bought the jacket, the other bought the trousers. The suit was worn in its entirety for Ezzat’s wedding the first week and for his cousin’s wedding the second. He and his wife, Abla, have remained on the mountain ever since, taking care of a herd of 500 goats and producing the best serdeleh cheese, which Abla preserves in old jars.

In Lebanon, even our name is related cheese – yoghurt, I mean! Or at least one of many versions. It is said that the name Loubnan, or Lebanon, likely comes from the white snow on the highest peaks, resembling a white coat of yoghurt – “laban” in Arabic – hence Loubnan.

I will not go further and pretend that Lebanon is also the land of yoghurt, but it is an important ingredient in our cuisine.

Laban (yoghurt) and labneh (strained yoghurt) are basic dairy products in Lebanese cuisine. Others are simple white cheeses, keshek (a fermented then dried mix of yoghurt and burghul, or cracked wheat) and other old cheeses like serdeleh, aambariss and darfyieh, somewhat forgotten but currently being revived.

From milk to cheese...

Today cows are everywhere but a hundred years ago they were found only on coastal plains, goats in the mountains and sheep in the Beqaa Valley.

Milk is most easily transformed into yoghurt. In my childhood, a five-litre pot of milk was delivered home every Wednesday, and the process was first to boil it and then let it cool until tepid. The right temperature was achieved when one could stick a finger in the milk and count to 10 without getting burned. Milk had to be just warm enough to let the starter grow. If it was too cold, the starter would stay “asleep,” my mom used to say.

Starter is the rawbeh, a spoon of last week’s laban, full of the bacteria necessary to grow and ferment the milk and transform it into laban. Laban is not sweetened in Lebanon. While it is rarely eaten with sugar, it is often eaten with bread or white rice (riz w laban, or “rice and yoghurt” is a favourite among children) or even cooked and served with hot meals – laban emmo (chunks of lamb cooked in yoghurt), kebbeh labnyieh (kebbeh balls in yoghurt). It is often seasoned with garlic and coriander on the coastal plains or garlic and mint in the mountains.

Then comes labneh, the dairy staple in our cuisine. Labneh is just strained yoghurt – add some salt, stir well, put it in a cloth bag (kiss labneh) and then hang it outside in a tree (or on the sink tap) to strain. Whey, or yellow acid liquid, will drip out for about six hours, and the result is a smooth, semi-hard cream (like cream cheese). Labneh is a must for breakfast or anytime of the day and is served with olive oil, fresh mint leaves, tomato and olives. Arrous labneh, a labneh tartine, is another kids’ favourite!

Labneh can be shaped into balls, dried in the sun and conserved in jars filled with olive oil, as mouneh (winter preserves).

Common Lebanese cheeses are akkawi (from Akka, a Palestinian town), halloumi (Cypriot cheese) and baida (white cheese) – all simple white cheeses. Cheese curing is not common in a hot and humid country such as Lebanon. Still there are delicious fresh cheeses such as aambariss, darfyieh and serdeleh are achieved without the need for a long curing period.

In fact, these three are not cheese or yoghurt – they are simply curdled milk! If cheese is made out of milk and rennet, and yoghurt of milk and rawbeh, then aambariss and serdeleh are just milk!

Darfyieh is a rare cheese from North Lebanon. It is cured white cheese and arisheh (ricotta), aged in layers in goatskins, in cool mountain grottoes. The result is a crumbly cheese with a powerful flavour and pungent aroma.

Aambariss and serdeleh are produced in similar ways – the first is of a mix of sheep and goat milk. The latter is purely goat milk. The process is the same: A 30-litre terra cotta serdeleh (or “jar” – hence the name) is filled with fresh raw milk, some coarse salt is added and then the milk is left in the jar to curdle for about two weeks. This process is done in caves, so temperature and humidity are controlled. The jars are often freshened with water from outside. When the milk curdles and turns into whey, a small hole at the bottom of the jar is opened to let out the whey, keeping just the curdle in. The jar is topped up with more milk, and so the curdling process begins a second time. The whey is removed and fresh milk added once again...and again, until the whole jar is filled with only curdled milk.

While Lebanon is not in the same league as the French or Spaniards when it comes to local and regional white cheeses, it has managed to create an impressive selection that is meaningful and memorable to its people.