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Cheese from Greece, island of Tinos

Kariki (Tinos)Καρίκι

A Tinos cheese ripened inside a dried, hollowed gourd (kariki). The cheese is layered with coarse salt, pressed down to remove all the air and sealed airtight in the gourd, where it matures for months. The maker says this lets fungal spores do their job. Sampled cheese was yellow, hard on the outside and soft inside.

Fully documentedCheese40 days – 7 monthsFamily: Skin- and pot-ripened cheese family (Tulum, Çömlek)

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedNo fixed recipe or amounts are given in the sources read; the maker describes the method in words.
Cheese, layered with coarse salt[ggg-roungeri]
A dried gourd (calabash), its top cut off and inside emptied[ggg-roungeri][salakidou2021]

Total time across the recorded steps: 40 days – 7 months

Start
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What changes: Starting material: a dried gourd with its top cut off and its inside emptied

Step 1 of 4
Prepare the gourd
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

A Tinos cheese ripened inside a dried, hollowed gourd (kariki). The cheese is layered with coarse salt, pressed down to remove all the air and sealed airtight in the gourd, where it matures for months. The maker says this lets fungal spores do their job. Sampled cheese was yellow, hard on the outside and soft inside. Made in 4 steps over 40 days – 7 months. The longest step, ripen in the gourd, takes 40 days – 7 months (Pappa E.C 2023).

Key numbers
Main step40 days – 7 monthsReported[pappa2023][ggg-roungeri][salakidou2021]Ripen in the gourd
AciditypH 5.6Measured[pappa2023]Ripen in the gourd

What makes this one different

Ripened sealed inside a dried gourd instead of an animal skin or a crock, which shapes the cheese and, in the maker's words, lets fungal spores do their work. Its moisture is low enough for a hard cheese although it is labelled soft.

Composition
One market sample - moisture 37.4 %, fat 40.8 %, salt 2.4 %, protein 19.3 %, fat in dry matter 65.2 %, pH 5.6
Fatty acids
More saturated and fewer unsaturated fatty acids than cheeses of similar ripening time, which the authors put down to the gourd

Related ferments

Safety

Cheese is layered with coarse salt, pressed to remove the air and sealed airtight in the gourd. A market sample measured pH 5.6 and 2.4 % salt (Pappa 2023).

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

Kariki had been made, if rarely, in some Tinos villages in the past, and it was later found being made at Steni by a family dairy (Greek Gastronomy Guide). A 2021 study described its traditional manufacturing process for the first time (Salakidou et al.).

Starter
The sources we found do not say how its fermentation begins.
Microbes
No study we found names its microbes.
  1. [pappa2023] Pappa E.C., Kondyli E., Pappas A.C., Giamouri E., Sarri A., Mavrommatis A., Zoidis E., Papalamprou L., Simitzis P., Goliomytis M., Tsiplakou E., Georgiou C.A. 2023, Compositional differences of Greek cheeses of limited production, Foods 12(12):2426paper
  2. [salakidou2021] Ourailoglou D., Athanasiadis V., Bozinou E., Salakidou C., Evmorfopoulos E., Lalas S. 2021, Manufacturing process and physicochemical analysis of Kariki, a traditional cheese from the Island of Tinos, Greece, International Food Research Journal 28(2):262–268 (abstract)paper
  3. [ggg-roungeri] Greek Gastronomy Guide, Angela Roungeri cheese dairy, Kariki and Malathouni, Steni, Tinosweb