Akkawi vs Tzfatit
Akkawi
Facts
- Texture
- Semi-soft
- Type
- Brined
- Rind
- No rind
- Country
- Cyprus
Akkawi is a white brine cheese linked with Cyprus and with the wider Levant. The block is pale, smooth, and semi-soft, and it has no rind. It sits in salty whey so it will keep, which makes the first taste quite salty. A soak in fresh water pulls some of that salt out before cooking or a meal. What remains is mild, milky, and a little elastic.
Tzfatit
Facts
- Milk
- Sheep
- Texture
- Semi-hard
- Type
- Brined
- Rind
- No rind
- Country
- Israel
- Place
- Upper Galilee
Tzfatit is a semi-hard salty cheese from the Upper Galilee in Israel. Traditional makers use sheep's milk, and they form the cheese in baskets that leave ring marks on the surface. The paste is white, elastic, and moist rather than dry and crumbly. Salt is part of the identity, but the taste stays milder than that of many sharp brined cheeses. It is eaten young more often than it is kept until the paste turns very hard.