Yogurt is plentiful, never really eaten sweet, but instead as an accompaniment to savoury dishes with meat and rice or lentils. Oh, and it’s a delightful creamy bath for stuffed zucchini or shish barak. Labneh has recently become all the rage worldwide, a strained salted yogurt, thick and pungent something like creme fraiche or sour cream, it makes everything better. There are myriad goat cheeses, labneh balls rolled in spices and herbs, kishk, and all manner of fresh or baladi cheese. Areesha is a bit like ricotta cheese while shanklish is an aged spiced cheese I love to use like parmesan.  Akkawi and Nablusi are preserved in salty water brine and must be soaked before eating.You’ll find them along with ashta or clotted cream in a dizzying array of desserts tucked into crispy pastry and soaked in floral sugar syrups. Tangy Bulgari is the sheep’s milk cousin of feta and is there anything better than a hot crusty piece of grilled halloumi? Jadayel is a pretty braided white cheese, often studded with nigella seeds, mostly eaten at breakfast.

The Lebanese are usually partial to one particular dairy, getting their copious amounts of laban (yogurt) and labneh from the same source. Small, unassuming cheese shops dot the Damascus Road which travels from the Beqqa Valley all the way to Beirut. The Beqqa Valley is known for its milk production with the large factories like Taanyel and Jarjoura producing much of what is found in the supermarkets around the country. But many smaller producers are prized, many sought out for one particular cheese or another.  One in particular, Hadwane Dairy, is packed with delicious variations on the basic Levantine cheeses and a crave-worthy areesha and honey sandwich customers pick up as breakfast on their way to spend a day hiking in the wetlands. 

Sisters Marcelle and Elham are from a seriously Christian area called Barqa, nestled into the foothills of the Northern Mount Lebanon range just west of the mostly agricultural Beqqa Valley. It’s full of shrines and holy sites and a supremely gorgeous corner of Lebanon. It’s also known as Kingdom of Junipers because they propagate juniper and cedar trees so they can be replanted in the mountain ridges above them.  Marcelle sells their beautiful organic fruits and vegetables at Souk el Tayeb on Saturdays, and if you’re in the know you can get some of the most delicious artisanal dairy products from the plastic coolers behind their stand. Labneh, laban, shanklish, areesha, baladi, akkawi, double cream. The cheeses and yogurts have all been made by Elham’s strong hands, who along with her husband Ghazi, tends to their farm. I decided to go learn a bit more about their artisan cheeses in person.