Halloumi and hellim: The story of an island and its cheese

The Food Programme

BBC

Arts, Food

4.4 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2023

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Halloumi, or hellim as its known by Turkish Cypriots, is now ubiquitous in our supermarkets, fast food chains and on restaurant menus. We import almost 50 per cent of the cheese produced in Cyprus. But its significance on the divided island from where it hails is bigger than you might imagine, and never more so than right now. In 2021, halloumi gained PDO status which means that any cheese labelled as halloumi within the EU has to be made on the Mediterranean island to a traditional recipe. And as Leyla Kazim finds, the dairy industry is having to adapt fast. But halloumi is more than just an export. On a divided island (there has been a border maintained by the UN since 1964), halloumi (Greek) or hellim (Turkish) is produced by both sides, and has been for millennia. In this programme Leyla travels to Cyprus to meet the people producing hellim and halloumi, to hear about its present and gauge it's future. She’ll watch it being made at scale in factories and in kitchens. She’ll meet dairy farmers and question the officials behind the new PDO status. And most importantly, she’ll taste a lot of halloumi.

Presented by Leyla Kazim Produced in Bristol by Clare Salisbury

Transcript

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0:48.0	We hope you enjoy it.
0:50.0	I have been waiting to make this program for a long time. I love Halumi. That much love
1:00.0	cheese from the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. Helumi is the most familiar Greek
1:06.4	Cypriot name for this cheese but it also goes by the name of Helim which is
1:10.9	what Turkish Cypriots call it.
1:13.0	I love this cheese's rich taste.
1:15.0	That squeak you get as you cut a block into thick slices.
1:20.0	Second only to the island where it's made, we eat more of this cheese than anywhere else in the world.
1:27.5	But let me ask you a question, how much do you think you know about this cheese?
1:34.4	Because its value, both financially and culturally,
1:38.4	is way bigger than you might expect.
	...

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