Like in all the villages in Cyprus, our folk tradition lasts until today and it is the pride of our cultural inheritance, the same warmhearted feeling lasts in Drinia and it is kept alive.
Today it is a little rare to meet mistresses for the manufacture of halloumi. As the years go by, this phenomenon will be more intense. The younger generations do not respond to the calling, they go to the ready staff, to the mass, to the easy solution.
Let’s see with much pride in Drinia people manufacture halloumi even though the traditional way is not different from what follows:
The kind of a very delicious traditional cheese known in the Cypriot but in the popular data as ‘halloumi’, anari other kinds of cheese and the traditional yoghurt are manufactured as follows:
The animal’s milk is boiled and after the special thickener powder has been added (the so called pidkia which in older times came from a very small lamp-lamp’s or pork’s stomach which they butcher at Christmas), it is left to get cold. Soon they milk congeals. Then it is cut in pieces and put in a talarin (a kind of small twined basket). It is pressed in order to strain and the liquid which comes out is the so called noros (whey).
(The whey is been re heated with the addition of more milk usually with the content one to ten. The whey will be congealed again which it produces anari whether salted or unsalted. When it is dried anari is stored. In order to be taken it is pressed in the talarin when we have noros again from its strain which will be used for the halloumia to be stored and be kept fresh).
In the meanwhile when the halloumia are dried after the procedure with the talarin they are thrown in the whey that is remained after the production of anari and are boiled in low fire for about an hour. It is so characteristic that when they get cooked they go up to the surface of the whey in which they boil. Then every piece of halloumi is salted. Julienne mint is added. Then every piece is folded and is stored in a glass pot. When the pot is full with halloumia the whey is added and it is closed. Halloumi as well as anari in contrast with other kinds of cheese have white color.
Today, the traditional halloumi can be bought in an expensive price per kilo while in other cities that has been industrialized it can be found cheaper because it will certainly not be the pure traditional halloumi .
Nevertheless the extended storing of halloumi in the whey can create small white worms which are called appitourka .In this case some oil is added in the pot for the protection of halloumi.
