Penîrê Giyayî: The Kurdish Wild-Herb Cheese of Wan

Sherko Sabir
May 29
5 min read

Penîrê Giyayî: The Kurdish Wild-Herb Cheese of Wan

In the Kurdish villages ringing Lake Wan — the great inland sea the maps call Van — the cheese is green at the heart. Penîrê giyayî, herbed cheese, known in Kurmanji as jajî and in Turkish as Van otlu peyniri, is a salty white sheep’s-milk cheese shot through with wild mountain herbs: threads of sirmo (wild garlic), mendo, heliz, mountain thyme, and a dozen others, pressed into the curd so that every bite tastes of the high pasture in spring. It is the centrepiece of the famous Wan breakfast, smeared on warm bread beside tea, honey, and — in summer — a slice of cold watermelon. What makes this cheese remarkable is that it is, quite literally, an edible map of the mountain. The herbs are not bought; they are gathered, traditionally by village children sent up the slopes after the snowmelt to collect whatever the season offers — the same wild flora that the bees forage for Kurdish honey and that Kurdish cooks gather for their spring greens. Those herbs are folded into the cheese, which is then either kept fresh in brine or pressed hard and buried underground to age for months, exactly as Kurds have long buried their cheese in clay. The result is a food that could only come from this place: the milk of these sheep, the herbs of these mountains, made by these villagers, in Kurdish. This is the one-hundred-and-seventh article in the series. Otlu peyniri is now made and sold across the east of Turkey under its Turkish name, and this series will not pretend otherwise. But its home is the Kurdish villages of Wan and Bitlis, its oldest name is a Kurdish one, and — as one cheesemaker put it, speaking Kurdish through a translator — Wan is Turkish by law but Kurdish by culture. The cheese is proof you can taste.

Key Takeaways

• Penîrê giyayî (jajî; Van otlu peyniri) is a Kurdish sheep’s-milk cheese studded with wild mountain herbs

• Made in the Kurdish villages around Lake Wan; the heart of the celebrated Wan breakfast

• Herbs such as sirmo (wild garlic), mendo, and heliz are foraged from the mountains after snowmelt

• Kept fresh in brine or buried underground to age for months, like other Kurdish cheeses

Quick Facts

Kurdish Name: Penîrê giyayî / jajî (Turkish: Van otlu peyniri)

Home: Kurdish villages around Lake Wan (Van) and Bitlis, Northern Kurdistan

Core: Raw sheep’s-milk cheese mixed with foraged wild herbs (sirmo, mendo, heliz, thyme)

Eaten: At breakfast with bread, tea, and honey; aged in brine or buried for months

Traditional Preparation

It begins, like all the great Kurdish cheeses, with mountain sheep’s milk — milk whose flavour already carries the grasses and flowers of the high pasture. The milk is warmed and set with rennet, and once it has firmed into curd, the foraged herbs are worked in: washed, chopped, and folded through the cheese so they are distributed all the way to the centre. The herbs are the whole point, and they are gathered, not grown — sirmo, a wild garlic, is the most prized, joined by mendo, heliz, sov, mountain thyme, mint, and others, picked from the slopes after the snow retreats. The herbed curd is then salted heavily, pressed into shape, and preserved in one of two ways: packed into brine (salamura) as a softer fresh cheese, or pressed hard and buried underground in sealed containers to ripen for three to six months, emerging firm, salty, and intensely aromatic. A single batch may draw on a handful of the roughly twenty-five herbs known to be used across the region, depending entirely on what the mountain offered that spring. Salty like a feta but deeper and greener, it is a cheese with a season and a place folded inside it.

An Edible Map of the Mountain

Penîrê giyayî gathers, in a single food, almost every thread this series has followed. It is a cheese, and so belongs to the great Kurdish dairy tradition of mast and motal and buried kope — indeed its aged form is buried underground exactly as kope is, the same instinct to let the earth do the ripening. But it is also a foraged food: the herbs in it are the wild plants of the Kurdish spring, the sirmo and the rest, kin to the kenger and the wild greens this series has gathered before, and to the wildflowers the bees turn into Kurdish honey. The same mountain that feeds the hives and fills the foragers’ baskets is the mountain pressed into this cheese. And there is a quiet dignity in how it is documented: peer-reviewed food-science studies catalogue these herbs by their Kurdish names — sirmo, mendo, heliz, sov — and measure how they enrich the cheese with vitamin C and natural antimicrobial compounds, naming plainly what the villages have always known. The honest note is simple. This cheese is now produced across eastern Turkey and sold under the Turkish label otlu peyniri, and it is genuinely loved by many peoples. But its origin and its heartland are the Kurdish villages of Wan and Bitlis; its Kurmanji name is jajî; and the breakfast it crowns is a Kurdish one. To eat it and call it only Turkish is to swallow the mountain and forget whose mountain it is.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is penîrê giyayî?

Penîrê giyayî — known in Kurmanji as jajî and in Turkish as Van otlu peyniri — is a salty, semi-hard sheep’s-milk cheese mixed with wild mountain herbs. It comes from the Kurdish villages around Lake Wan (Van) and is the signature element of the famous Wan breakfast, eaten with bread, tea, and honey. The herbs give it a distinctive green, garlicky, herbal flavour.

Which herbs go into it?

As many as twenty-five different wild herbs can be used, though any one cheese uses a handful depending on the season. The most prized is sirmo, a wild garlic; others include mendo, heliz, sov, mountain thyme, wild mint, and assorted wildflowers. They are foraged from the mountains after the snow melts, traditionally gathered by village children, which makes each cheese a record of one particular spring on one particular hillside.

Is it Kurdish or Turkish?

It is produced and sold widely across eastern Turkey today and enjoyed by many communities, so this series does not claim it exclusively. But its heartland is the Kurdish-inhabited villages of Wan and Bitlis, it carries a Kurdish name (jajî), and its wild herbs are known by Kurdish names. As one Kurdish cheesemaker observed, Wan is Turkish by law but Kurdish by culture — and the cheese is one of the clearest expressions of that culture.

Conclusion

Penîrê giyayî is the one-hundred-and-seventh article in this series, and perhaps the single food that ties the most of it together: the milk of the dairy chapters, the buried ageing of kope, the foraged herbs of the spring mountainside, the wildflowers shared with the honeybees, and the hospitality of a Kurdish breakfast spread. It is the high pasture made solid — a green-veined cheese you could read like a map of one mountain in one season. The world increasingly knows it by a Turkish name, and it is right to admit the cheese is shared. But it was born in Kurdish villages, it speaks a Kurdish name, and it tastes of Kurdish mountains. One hundred and seven articles in, the herbed cheese of Wan stands for the deepest argument of this whole series: that a people’s food remembers where it comes from, even when the map has been redrawn to forget.