Shuk Shuka's Labneh

Photo credit Shuk Shuka

Last year I attended a Shuk Shuka pop-up dinner in San Francisco. A unique collaboration between a Jew, a Christian and a Muslim with Israeli, Palestinian, Yemeni and Jordanian heritage they focused on culinary commonalities and bringing people together over bountiful platters of food. The welcoming vibe and live music made the event feel like a party. I spoke to one of the founders, Inon Tzadok, to find out what happened when the party ended and the cheesemaking began.

Shuk Shuka started with pop up dinners and brunches. How has the business pivoted since the pandemic shut down? 

The pandemic technically shut us down completely, our catering orders were canceled and all of our dinner and brunches events, which were gathering of almost 100 people in one space, sharing food, connecting with each other, and dancing.

In this new reality, we understand that even when restaurants are coming back it will take a long time until we can bring our events back to life. We had to figure a new way to stay connected with our customers and keep our business running, rather than shutting down and losing all the beautiful connections we created. Since we don’t have a brick and mortar, our Shuk Shuka marketplace is our best option for continuing to deliver food, interact, and grow our community. It’s actually created magic since we can reach many more people that haven’t had the opportunity to come to our events or haven’t heard about our selection of Middle Eastern staples, such as dips, spreads, challah, and babka. The food we are offering now is what was served during our monthly events, in one form or another. 

Your collaboration is all about celebrating the commonalities between Arab and Israeli culture. What cheeses did you enjoy growing up in the Middle East?

Our collaboration is to celebrate the communities within the Middle East, but in the big picture it is to celebrate the connection between all cultures, so we really put an effort to have as much diversity as possible. We grew up eating lots of soft cheese, cottage cheese was the most common, but halloumi and labneh were more of a treat and are more recognizable as Middle Eastern cheese.

How have you served cheeses at your pop up meals? 

At previous pop-up events, our team served halloumi cheese and labneh cheese at our brunches. Halloumi cheese is semi-hard cheese we served fried, it’s mostly made from a mix of goat and sheep milk but sometimes cows milk.

Tell me about the labneh and role it has in Shuk Shuka. Why did you decide to start making and selling it? 

Photo credit Shuk Shuka

Labneh is a thick, creamy yogurt style cheese. I like to say that labneh is the Middle Eastern version of the classic French Crème fraîche, similar to plain sour cream. 

When we started with our brunch pop-ups we thought this must include cheese, a cheese that can bring extra flavor to eat along with our shakshuka (a sauce of tomatoes, olive oil, peppers, onion and garlic, and commonly spiced with cumin and paprika), fresh pita, or challah bread.

How do you make it and where did the recipe come from? 

Labneh is made by straining yogurt until most of the liquid is drained. In order to give our cheese a bit more sour taste and thicker texture we are straining the yogurt for a few extra days than usual. The yogurt is strained in different techniques and it rotates every two days to make sure we keep the product safe and to achieve the right texture.

What kind of milk is used, and where do you source it?

While most labneh cheese is made from cow milk, we are using goat milk. We wanted to give a more unique flavor to labneh, while offering our cheese for those who are more sensitive to cow milk as goat milk is more digestible. We get local goat milk yogurt from the Bohemian Creamery located in Sebastopol, CA. Bohemian Creamery is known for their top quality milk and their products can be found at top bay area restaurants.

How do you recommend serving it?

Photo cred Shuk Shuka

I recommend serving it with eggs, toast, salad, and veggies. We serve our labneh with our spicy Zhug dip (zhug is a Yemenite spicy chimichurri). The combination of the creamy yogurt cheese and fresh ingredients, such as jalapeño, garlic, and cilantro, give it an extra flavor kick and brings a very unique bite. Our labneh is delivered in a jar with olive oil and Za'atar spices, so we encourage customers to use the oil of the labneh as a base for salad dressing.

Simply slice toast, top with our shakshuka sauce or marinara sauce, over easy eggs, labneh, and voila! Brunch is served.