Where do you find the world’s most expensive cheese?
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Perhaps at the captain’s table on the Queen Victoria cruise liner? Maybe it’s a delicacy in the food hall at Harrod’s swank London department store? It’s reasonable to think the upmarket eateries that line the harbour of Portofino on the Italian Riviera might serve it.
Not so. If you want to sample this costly delicacy you will have to travel to the Zasavica Special Nature Reserve in Serbia, some 85 kilometres north-west of the capital Belgrade.
It’s the only place in the world that sells it. And you will have to pay about $A3000 a kilo for your indulgence.
The unique cheese is made from the milk of … wait for it … donkeys, about 100 of them in fact.
They are among a pack of 130, who run wild in the reserve established in wetlands two decades ago,
The reserve is managed by conservationist Slobodan Simić, who introduced a variety of animals into what was originally little more than a swamp beloved by bird-watchers. The animals included mangalica, a breed of Hungarian domestic pig, Podolian cows and, more recently, beavers.
He found a handful of starving and abused donkeys in a local market, nurtured them and grew the herd.
He then decided to experiment with making cheese from his donkeys’ milk. About 25 litres of donkey milk is needed for each kilogram of cheese, with annual production a mere 200kg of the highly prized cheese.
The donkeys are milked manually, as there are no suitable machines to do the job.
Tourists rave at the taste. The cheese is white, crumbly, intensely flavoured, and has a natural saltiness to it.
It is smoked in the final stages of production and is called pule which, roughly-translated, means donkey’s pet.
Simić and his nature reserve got a massive publicity boost four years ago when a story, since proven to be apochryphal, was carried by major news agencies suggesting that Serbian tennis superstar Novak Djokovic had signed a contract to buy up the entire stock of pule for his restaurant chain – Novak Cafe and Restaurant.
Ancient Egypt’s Queen Cleopatra is said to have bathed nightly in donkey’s milk to preserve the beauty and youth of her skin. Slobodan Simić boasts his donkey cheese also helps slow down the ageing process and boosts virility.
He told a British journalist: “If you drink our milk and eat our cheese, you can even sleep with your own wife.” With a sexist quip like that, you will not be surprised to find he has had several failed marriages!
