Sydost: It just so happens that the word in Swedish for east (
Öst or
Ost) is the same as the word for cheese (
Ost).
Sydost is the word for Southeast. Southeast is also where you find Cyprus, which is where haloumi originates from. So it's a a cheese, a cheese from the south, and it's also the direction it is from.
Thank you very much for asking, I was very proud of that one and hoping I would get the opportunity to explain it to all of you who don't speak Swedish. I just didn't want to do it before anyone asked!
EU Forbiddence: Because the EU believes itself to have authority over the languages of all it's members it forbids the use of certain names for products which doesn't meet different arbitrary sets of rules for these products. Sometimes this is good, like say a "Polskisauski" sausage can only be called Polskisauski if it has 30% goat meat, because it was traditionally used with goat in Poland, so that people aren't just able to slap the Polskisauski on any usual kind of pork sausage just because the name has gotten popular. But mostly it's just nonsense stuff which protects Frenchmen from honest competition over their shitty wines with rules like "It can't be called Champagne unless it's from the province of Champagne". Because of trade deals with the EU I believe the US also has to follow those rules.
Now, I didn't make my haloumi according to the traditional recepy, so it's moot. But even if I would have done so I still wouldn't have been able to call it haloumi because it wasn't made in Cyprus.
Because, you know, the EU is only in favour of free trade when it serves the Big Three.
Health Standards: Animal health standards in Cyprus are horrific. They also have the
highest usage of antibiotica per capita in the EU:
Those numbers are from 2011 but they're still the biggest user in the EU.
You can look up 2016 data here if you want, they have an interactive database.So basically haloumi became a huge hit in the last few years. Sweden have some of the highest animal health standards in the world, but Swedes are generally very naive and don't realise how much this is not the same abroad.
So there was a huge kalabalik earlier this year when it was revealed that --
ve och fasa! -- Cyprus' standards are not up to our standards and the cheese was full of ANIMAL ABUSE and SUFFERING.
But yes, snidery aside, I must admit that I also had not thought much about Cyprus' standards, and was also taken by surprise about just how freakishly out of this world the difference was. I usually try to only buy Sweden-produced goods
specifically because I know just how much better they are (for my conscience and health both), so I felt kind of bad that I had let this all slip by without considering. Because of the above EU rules the sales of non-Cypriotic haloumi was nearly non-existent -- the fad was for halloumi and halloumi only. Since the scandalous news spread sales of Sweden-produced pirate cheese has been picking up (under the names
Stekost, Frying Cheese, and
Eldost, Fire Cheese), but I heard about how simple it was to make yourself so I decided to try it, since I can buy wholemilk by the litre on that nearby farm anyway.
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