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Kolašin leaf cheese, kolašinski lisnati sir, is the cheese of the valleys below Bjelasica and Sinjajevina. The curd is pressed into sheets so thin that locals nickname them kartika, cigarette papers, and it takes ten litres of milk or more to make a single kilo. Since 2019 its name has been protected, and it is still made on family farms that you can visit.
A cheese made in sheets
Lisnati means 'in sheets' or 'leafy', and that is the whole idea. Cut a piece of Kolašin cheese and it falls apart in thin, soft layers, so thin that people here call them kartika, after the paper used to roll cigarettes. Around Kolašin the cheese also goes by a local nickname, listać.
It is the cheese of the valleys between the Tara canyon, the Morača, Bjelasica and Sinjajevina. The national tourist board's cheese route runs through the villages that still make it: Trebaljevo, Gornji Pažanj, Blatina, Lipovo, Drijenak, Šljivovice, Štitarica, Podbišće and Tomaševo, and the katuns on the slopes of Sinjajevina. Locals will tell you it can only be made here, because of the climate and the grass.
How it's made
The method, as recorded by Slow Food, starts with an earlier milking: milk is skimmed and left to sour, then mixed half and half with fresh raw milk and a little water, warmed to 38–42 °C and set with rennet. The curd is cut into four and pressed flat on wooden boards under a stone, which is what builds the thin layers.
It is a thirsty cheese to make. Slow Food puts it at about ten litres of milk per kilo; a Lipovo family filmed by the national broadcaster RTCG in 2017 counted twelve. Because the milk is partly skimmed, the cheese is fairly lean, and it keeps for only 15 to 20 days. This is a fresh cheese, eaten within weeks of making.
A protected name
In May 2019 Kolašinski lisnati sir became the seventh Montenegrin food with a protected designation of origin. The application came from the Kolašin leaf cheese producers' association, and the protected area covers 17 local communities in the municipalities of Kolašin and Mojkovac. At the time more than a hundred farms were producing it, with about 2,000 tonnes sold a year.
How to eat it, and where
At home it is eaten fresh with bread, and it goes into the mountain dishes: kačamak, cicvara and popara. In Kolašin, Restoran Troglava, listed by the town's tourist board, puts it at the top of its specialities alongside kačamak and cicvara. For the real thing, go to the villages: in Gornje Lipovo, 12 km from Kolašin, a family dairy farm offers cheese tastings and lets guests help with the milking, and on Sinjajevina, Katun Potrk serves its own cheese and kajmak in summer.
