Bieno Sirenje: The Macedonian Beaten Cheese from Mariovo
I'm writing this article with an unopened package sitting in my fridge. I brought it back from Skopje along with a pile of other cheeses, more than anyone can honestly eat in a few days, so it's waiting its turn. All I know about it is what's printed on the label and what I've read about it - and for a cheese I still haven't tasted, that turns out to be a surprising amount.
Bieno sirenje (Macedonian: биено сирење) is the "beaten cheese" of Macedonian cooking: the curd is kneaded and beaten by hand, the rounds dry in the sun for a few days and then ripen in a strong brine; what comes out is a hard, yellowish, salty cheese with almost no fat in it, the kind that belongs on the table next to a glass of rakija.
What Bieno Sirenje Means and Why It Gets Mixed Up with the White One
For once the name simply describes the work. Macedonian bie means to beat or to pound, so bieno is beaten: the fresh curd is kneaded and struck with a metal tool until it gives up its whey, and that's where the cheese got its name. You'll also hear it called tepano sirenje, the same thing said more colloquially. The trap for foreigners is the second word: sirenje in Macedonian just means cheese, so anyone who asks for sirenje at the market walks away with the white brined cheese you find all over the Balkans. Bieno sirenje is related to that white cheese roughly the way a dried apple ring is related to an apple - same beginning, different fate. White belo sirenje is full-fat, soft and ripens in brine alone; bieno has the fat taken out of it, it's hard, dried by the sun and only then salted. Bulgarian sirene is a cousin of the white one, Greek feta likewise, and so is the Albanian white cheese that comes out of barrels.
The Legend of the Tax Collectors and a Cheese Nobody Was Meant to Want
Nobody has put a date on this cheese; the story just gets passed down. In Mariovo, a thinly settled mountain region near Prilep, they've supposedly been making it for six or seven centuries, and it started as a dodge: the story goes that farmers beat the curd until they had driven the fat out of it, kept the fat at home and salted the rest heavily to keep - which gave them a dry, salty cheese the tax collectors had no interest in. A cheese that legend says was designed so nobody would want it is now one of the pricier things on the Macedonian cheese shelf. The craft spread from Mariovo to Berovo, to Galičnik and down into the lowlands around Tetovo, where the big dairies make it from cow's milk, and Mariovo's bieno sirenje is still waiting for a protected geographical indication. So far only one product in North Macedonia has one, the Ohrid cherry.
How Bieno Sirenje Is Made and What to Eat It With
The process is closer to a workout than to cheesemaking. The milk, once only sheep's and now routinely cow's, is set with rennet, the curd is kneaded and scalded with near-boiling water, kneaded again, drained through cloth into rounds, and those go onto wooden shelves out in the sun, where they dry and turn yellow for four to seven days. Only then comes coarse salt on every side, and finally the brine, which is about one-fifth salt. Of everything the milk started with, what stays in the finished cheese is mostly protein and salt - the fat went into kajmak and the water went into the sun. It sounds brutal and by all accounts it tastes that way: sharp, salty, with a smell that won't hide in a fridge.
You eat it cold, sliced, with rakija, with tomatoes, roasted peppers or ajvar and with walnuts; it gets baked in the oven until it runs, and it goes into fried dough triangles as a filling. Up at the sheepfolds they make it from spring to autumn, in the dairies all year round, and you can buy it either straight from the producer at the market or vacuum-packed in any decent supermarket.
The Package I Still Haven't Opened
I bought my bieno sirenje at a supermarket in Skopje: cow's milk, vacuum-packed, labeled Bačilo - the Macedonian word for a mountain sheepfold, so the shelf was already promising me highland pastures. The 405-gram block worked out at 579 MKD (9.50 EUR) a kilo. I can't describe the taste: I brought back so much cheese from the Balkans that this one still hasn't had its turn. Balkan cheeses are my favorite food souvenir and this time I went overboard. The legend says it came about so that nobody would want it. I wanted it badly.
