Yak cheese
Cheese from the milk of yaks or yak and cow crosses, made across the Himalaya, Tibet and Mongolia.
Also: dri cheese, nak cheese, chauri cheese
Yak cheese is made from the rich milk of the female yak, called dri in Tibetan and nak in Nepali, or from chauri and dzo, crosses of yak and cow. Yak milk has nearly twice the fat of cow milk, and the cheeses are rich, golden and often slightly gamey. Traditional forms include soft and hard churpi in Nepal, Sikkim, Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh, datshi in Bhutan, chura in Tibet and byaslag and aaruul in Mongolia. Swiss-style hard yak cheeses have been made in Nepal's high valleys since the 1950s, when dairies were set up with Swiss help, and are sold in Kathmandu.