Trnič

What is Trnič Cheese?

Trnič is a hard cheese with a distinctive shape that shepherds made for centuries on Velika planina, Mala planina and Gojška planina. They made it in pairs, since by some readings the shape stands for a woman's breasts. It was an old symbol of fertility and love: the shepherd kept one trnič and gave the second, decorated in the same way, to the woman he had chosen. On Velika planina above Kamnik the craft survived, and trniči are now one of the best known souvenirs of the plateau.

The shepherds started from skimmed sour milk, heated more than usual so the curd came out leaner. They drained it, salted it heavily, added cream, then worked the mass by hand into balls about the size and shape of an onion, a little pointed at the top and flatter at the bottom. Each one was then decorated with patterns pressed into the surface using small wooden stamps carved for exactly that purpose, called pisave.

Once shaped and decorated, the little loaves went on a shelf above the hearth, where they dried, took on a light smoke and kept. Only beech wood was burned in the fire during drying. After roughly fourteen days the trniči were dry enough, and they had lost half their weight.

Many women who received a trnič from a shepherd kept it carefully, sometimes for years, but the point of the cheese was that people ate it. Shepherds gave trniči to other villagers too, not only to girls and women. Dried ones were often soaked in warm or cold milk to soften them enough to eat, and they were also grated over pasta and meat dishes as a seasoning.