Hello my friends! I am excited about the things I have to share with you in this blog post! My longtime friend, Neda, founder of fashion startup Hautefit, and her fiancé Lazar, were getting married in Serbia, and extended a wedding invitation to M. Cheesemonger and myself. We had already promised her at least a year earlier that we would be there, so off we went! Serbiaaaaaa!!!
I knew nearly nothing about this Balkan gem of a country, other than from what I had heard in the news over the years. I had zero idea of what to expect, although Neda assured me that the food was delicious, the fashion was stellar, and the country was beautiful. Lazar could not stop talking about how delicious Serbian cheese is, and was looking forward to the traditional Serbian band that was to play late into the night of his wedding reception.
As you can imagine, they were both right. M. Cheesemonger and I loved so much about Belgrade–from walking along the Sava and Danube rivers, to visiting the large fortress at the joining of those rivers, to strolling through the old town, to taking in the Soviet era brutalist architecture, to the extremely vibrant nightlife. Our friends had a wonderful wedding, complete with two wedding bands that played until 3:30am, a ceremony at the largest Eastern Orthodox church in the world, the largest and most delicious wedding buffet I have ever seen in my life, and the coming together of hundreds of friends and family members.
A couple days after the wedding, after we had all slept off that massive party, Neda invited some of her lady friends for a photo shoot around old town Belgrade and along the water to create the first large-scale campaign for her clothing company Hautefit, which creates stylish and functional pieces for working women on the go (yesssss, I love my new Hautefit Queen jacket!). This time, I was in front of the camera instead of behind it. It was a gorgeous, sunny day.
But wait–I know what you’re all thinking, “What about Serbian cheese???” Luckily for me, while I was sleeping after that wedding, another more intrepid group of ladies rented a car to visit Zasavica Donkey Reserve, about 80 km outside of Belgrade, and brought back the most storied Serbian cheese–pule, or magareci sir–to our ladies’ outing. This cheese is made from 60% donkey milk and 40% goat’s milk, and if you want a pound of it, it will set you back about $575 if you buy direct from the source. Yes. It is the most expensive cheese in the world. That’s because there are only about 100 Balkan jennies that can produce the milk for this special cheese. They are an extremely scarce resource!
Imagine my joy at being able to see, smell, experience such a special treat! It is a fresh cheese, made the morning it was sold. I ate it the following day, so it was still rather fresh. It came vacuum sealed in plastic to withstand some travel, and was then presented in a golden truncated pyramidal box with the words “Donkey Cheese” and “Magareci Sir.” Once opened, the buttery, grassy, fresh perfume delicately wafted into the warm autumn air. The cheese looked otherwise nondescript–a uniform lump of bony white. The edges were smooth–no basket molds here–and there is no rind (of course, since it’s fresh). The paste looked ever so slightly crumbly.
Once I took a bite, I understood what made this cheese special. There were so many layers of flavor–from demi-sel butter at the foundation, to the middle flavors of sweet grasses, to the extremely heady floral notes that lingered in a ridiculously long finish. This was no ordinary fresh cheese. It was aromatic to the extreme–I might as well have been inhaling the scent of milk on a Serbian hillside. Texture-wise, it is not so unusual. There is a little bit of give in the paste, it is a little spongy feeling.
Oh, but that lingering, longing aftertaste. It was like nothing I had ever tasted, and I think a big part of that flavor is a result of the Zasavica Reserve’s unique terroir. The reserve has one of the last preserved wetlands in Serbia, and is home to a wide array of rare plants. The cheese reflected that diversity in its stunning array of floral, grassy, leafy perfumes.
If you have the chance to visit Serbia, I highly recommend seeking out pule, as well as the many other local cheeses!!
