(New York Jewish 7 days) — Florence (Zeitouni) Cohen grew up in Brooklyn feeding on string cheese. Not the rubbery Polly-O cheese sticks that you can purchase in any old grocery store, while. She implies the string cheese of her youth, which she now feeds her 2-12 months-aged daughter: a clean, spongy and semi-smooth moderate cheese that is a staple of the Syrian Jewish community.

“Absolutely everyone has string cheese in the refrigerator,” mentioned Cohen, referring to the sizable Syrian Jewish communities in Brooklyn and Offer, New Jersey, in which she and her youthful family moved two a long time in the past.

Most Us citizens consider of string cheese as a ease foods, a little something moms and dads toss to their little ones as they hustle from one particular exercise to the upcoming. But if Cohen, 27, has her way, Syrian string cheese will quickly turn out to be a staple of the broader Jewish American diet. Drawing upon her grandmother’s string cheese recipe, Cohen introduced a kosher food stuff small business, Grandma’s Cheese, in 2013. Cohen began by offering homemade string cheese in Midwood, the Brooklyn neighborhood where by she was born and raised these times, she has 16 items that are bought in 30 retailers across the Tri-State area and over and above. She also operates Grandma’s Cheese Cafe in Very long Branch on the Jersey Shore.

“String cheese says comfort and ease and really like,” Cohen instructed the New York Jewish Week. “I noticed an wonderful products that was tough to make and I said, okay, allow me make it. Enable me make one thing worthwhile that people today really want.”

A cross between mozzarella and halloumi, Syrian string cheese, as the identify indicates, is stretched, twisted and strung as it is created. According to Benita Kasbo, the proprietor of Kasbo’s Current market, a Center Jap specialty cheese organization in Madison, New Jersey, all Syrians — Jews, Christians and Muslims alike — take into account string cheese a staple of their meal plans. Identified in Arabic as jibneh shelal, or braided cheese, it is frequently studded with black nigella or caraway seeds….