Peynir (pay-neer)
Language: Turkish
Meaning: Cheese
Picture this: You’re riding your horse across the vast Central Asian steppes, looking after your herd of horses and sheep. You have a long way to go and you’re riding hard. You go to drink some milk you got yesterday from that leather bag but you tip it back and nothing comes out! That’s because it’s turned into peynir (and particularly, if you’re lucky, it’s turned into tulum)! Now, if you’ve ever eaten Indian food, you probably know that favorite dish, saag paneer, or if you prefer Iranian food, maybe you know sabzi panir. Cheese is a universal concept for preserving milk for long spans of time and all over Central Asia, and all over the region, people call it by essentially the same delicious name.