As a child in newly independent Kazakhstan, I yearned to snack on candy bars, soft drinks and anything foreign and packaged. Instead, my mother would

Qurt: A "resilient" Kazakh cheese

submited by

Style Pass

2021-05-19 17:36:41

As a child in newly independent Kazakhstan, I yearned to snack on candy bars, soft drinks and anything foreign and packaged. Instead, my mother would buy salty, sour snacks that resembled white chocolate truffles, but were in fact hardened balls of sour cheese. At local bazaars, I'd see aunties cheerfully selling small batches of these homemade goods packed in cellophane.

A Central Asian dry cheese made of fermented milk, qurt is a versatile treasure of nomadic people's ingenuity. There are variations of names for this food, including kashk in Iran, chortan in Armenia, and aaruul in Mongolia, as this calcium-rich, protein-packed snack accompanied travellers along the Silk Road and beyond.

View image of Qurt is a traditional dried dairy product that can be found across Central Asia (Credit: Credit: Jackie Ellis/Alamy)

But the origin of qurt is the road itself. Born out of necessity, the nomadic people of Central Asia carried horse, sheep or camel milk in animal-skin saddle bags called torsyk. Journeys across the vast steppe provided a perfect setting for fermentation to take place inside this vessel, and the galloping motion of the horse gave a churning effect that separated the milk into curds. These curds, drained, dried and lightly salted, packed all the nutrients of the liquid dairy product into a solid, portable food.