When Milk Sleeps. Turkey's Cheeses (Photography: Necdet Kaygin, Sinan Göksel)

“Behind every cheese there is a pasture of a different green under a different sky”, Italo Calvino once wrote… It almost seems as though these words were written with regard to the hundreds of cheese varieties produced, for the most part through traditions perpetuated for millenia until this day, all across Anatolia. Although we might not always be aware of it amid the rumpus of everyday life, Turkey possesses a lavish cheese culture to boast of. Across the pages of this book, Artun Ünsal first delves into the historical developments that led to the emergence of cheese in Anatolia, before detailing every possible extant cheese variety and production technique region by region, and eventually chronicles dishes and desserts unique to Turkish cuisine, whose preparation involves cheese as a backbone ingredient. The culture of dairy products boasts an extensive history in our country, a land rich in natural beauty with its abundant plains, mountains, sheep, goats, cows and dairy farms, which sheltered and cradled countless civilisations over thousands of years. At first glance, the array of cheese varieties produced and consumed in Turkey might seem rather limited. In fact, the available data substantiates the fact that the Turkish market is dominated by a mere few cheese kinds, namely white cheese, kaşar, tulum, and mihalıç. If truth be told, most of us have only recently begun to discover the sheer diversity, as well as the genuine delightfulness of our local cheeses. Isn’t that precisely one of the aims pursued by When Milk Sleeps: to provide a comprehensive demonstration of this bounteousness? Its entire object being Turkey’s culture, When Milk Sleeps rightfully belongs to you…