🧀 Anari

Anari is a soft Cypriot whey cheese, a by-product of halloumi making. It is made all year round, fresh or dried, salted or unsalted. It is a separate product with its own place in Cypriot cooking: unsalted anari is eaten with honey and used in pastries, while dry salted anari is grated over pasta. ²

It belongs to the whey cheeses: under the Codex standard these are obtained, among other ways, by coagulating whey with heat, with or without acid, and milk or cream may be added to the whey. ¹ They form because whey proteins denature at 88–92 °C. Similar cheeses exist elsewhere: ricotta in Italy, urda in Serbia and Romania, lor in Turkey. ⁶ Anari is made mostly from goat's and sheep's milk, but cow's milk can also be used. ⁴

Its making is part of the halloumi process. Once the curd for halloumi is taken from the cauldron, the whey is heated further with constant stirring, and a little fresh milk is added, called "prosgalo" or "anarogalo". ² As the liquid boils, anari rises to the surface. It is lifted with a slotted spoon, placed in moulds and pressed under weights for about an hour; towards the end of boiling a little water is added, and some people use vinegar, lemon juice or salt. ³ Researchers are studying the whey left after anari as a source of lactic acid cultures. ⁵

Fresh anari is soft, moist and fragile, with a very mild, nutty, sweet flavour, and is sold in vacuum packs. For the dry kind, the cheese is dried in rooms with cold air streams until it is hard enough to grate. ⁷ In the past fresh anari was dried in the sun, and the dry cheese was kept in large clay pots sprinkled with bran or flour. ³

Unsalted anari was traditionally eaten for breakfast with honey, and also with carob honey, epsima or sugar. It goes into sweet pourekia and anaropitta and, with halloumi, into the filling of Cypriot ravioles. Anari is linked with the cheese week before Lent, and in the village of Lefkara the groom's family brought honey with anari to the bride's family the day after an engagement. ²³

Why it matters to you. Do not treat anari as a long-life product: whey cheeses have high moisture and pH, so microbes grow in them easily and their shelf life is limited. ⁶ Choose unsalted for sweet dishes and dry salted for pasta: they differ in taste and use. ²