My father used to be out at sea, and got us spoilt on the foreign loot he would bring in every time he got home. Chocolates, sauces, tinned beans, canned sausages, luncheon meat, corned meats, and cheeses. Later on, when he took a shore job at the Mazagon Docks in Mumbai, the frequency of the goodies got even more regular. That’s because we did not have to wait for him to return. With any and every ship that came to port from a distant land, came precious cargo. Cargo that, till that time, was hard to come by locally.
Yes, I loved the Toblerones, Dak sausages and the Spam, but the most silken and creamy was the cheese. Not just any kind of cheese, wax bound, great balls of gouda, wheels of cheddar, red wrapped Baby Bell, and above all Kraft.
Kraft Cheese sealed in cerulean blue cans, with the legend emblazed in yellow, were a status symbol. To have a tin of Kraft Cheese on your table meant that you and your family had arrived. Kraft Cheese cans looked impressive, the cheese was massively processed, bright golden yellow, deliciously sharp, silken smooth and soft as hell. It beat the hell out of the Amul or Vijaya Cheese we bought locally. Though, since no one read the fine print on the can, no one realised that the cheese, in all probability contained, no milk or dairy at all. In reality nowhere on any of the packaging of Kraft Singles, today, does the product claim to be cheese. It calls itself an “American cheese product”. Which is like calling, what should be called an ice-cream, a “frozen dessert” made with pure vegetable oils. Nevertheless, we blindly relished the make-believe cheese.
Amul slowly became a behemoth, and their cheese became the generic cheese brand in the country. The Amul Cheese we buy in a can, which I have to admit, is quite delicious when just opened, and is ideal for sandwiches, local Indian pizzas, and old-fashioned au gratins. However, in my experience, this pasteurised processed cheddar cheese doesn’t stay as soft and creamy over a longer period. This cheese is made with Cheese, Sodium Citrate, Citric Acid, emulsifiers and graded cow/buffalo milk.
But as my mind and palate opened up, as I started travelling and tasting food abroad, as my interest piqued beyond processed and pasteurised avatars of cheese that was available fresh from the farms from artisanal cheese makers of Switzerland, Germany France and the UK, I began to discover the variety of fresh, aged handmade cheeses.
Creamy Cheeses like Boursin, Brie and Camembert, all fresh and creamy, flavoured with aromatic herbs and spices. Brie an easy cheese creamy, soft, and very mild. And Camembert, supple and lush, from the cows of Normandy, iconic on hot baguettes and bread. Then the hard ones like Gouda, a semi-hard Dutch cheese with a mild, nutty flavour and smooth, creamy texture or Emmental, the famous Swiss “cheese with big holes” with a characteristic sweet and nutty flavour, perfect to be grated on pasta or sliced in sandwiches. And the English Cheddar. From the village of Cheddar in Somerset, Cheddar has been described as buttery, moist, and a little melty. As the cheese ages, it dries out and becomes more nutty, crumbly, and sharp. The stinky cheeses come in a category of their own, and are honestly not everyone’s cup of tea.
Though I just love a good Roquefort, made from unpasteurized sheep’s milk, aged in natural caves in the South of France. Rich, creamy, salty, and with a very strong taste. Or a Gorgonzola a traditional Italian cheese, off-white with blue veins that resembles archaic porcelain. When the cheese is young, it is soft and creamy and buttery but when fully matured is strong, piquant and sharply pungent, and smelly. And the old English Stilton. Equally strong and intense and smelly, streaked like marble, crumbly and soft with a salty finish that sticks to your palate. All these ‘Blue Cheeses” can be eaten in small quantities of bread, but express themselves better in salads, and along with fruit such as pears, figs, raisins, dates.
But today you don’t have to look to the continent for your cheese supply, we, right here in India, have been not only making French and Swiss kinds of cheeses, but now boast of our own Indian range.
Paneer, of course, is India’s centuries’ old cheese. It is fresh and unaged and is part of every nearly every Indian cuisine. From paneer comes Chhena or actually the other way around; from Chhena comes paneer. Chhena has more moisture and is made from curdling the milk with lemon juice. It is soft, moist and crumbly. Once the moisture dries out, it becomes paneer. Chhena is the main ingredient for most of Bengal’s fabulous sweets including Rosogolla, Cham Cham and Sandesh.
In the paneer family is Topli Na Paneer. It is a wobbly, pudding like lump, a bit like a Panna Cotta, but floating in very salty whey, now available only at Parsee weddings. This cheese is such a small cottage business that hardly a handful of people make it.
Bandel, is a salty cheese again from Bengal, with 400 years of documented history. Influenced by the Portuguese, this East Indian cheese is made from Chhena and is available in two varieties – plain and smoked. However, the cheese needs to be soaked in water, often overnight, till it becomes crumbly in texture and can be quite a cheese used well with salads and pasta.
Then there is, Churu, which actually means ‘spoilt cheese’ that comes from the Himalayan regions of Nepal and Sikkim. It is an extremely aromatic, pungent, blue and mouldy cheese that is used as the main ingredient for the famous Bhutanese dish Ema Datshi, a simple stew made of a variety of chillies and cheese.
Another Himalayan cheese is Chhurpi, often called the hardest cheese in the world. This protein-rich cheese with a smoky flavour becomes chewier the longer you keep chewing. Chhurpi is made from the milk of a Chauri – a cross between a male yak and a female cow. This cheese is tangy and dense.
Kalari, is India’s answer to Mozzarella. Native of Kashmir and to Dogras, this cheese is a dense cheese that is flattened, salted and sautéed in its own fat on a hot griddle. Once sautéed, the outside layer turns a crisp golden but the insides remain soft, creamy, gooey and molten. It can then be garnished with spices and served hot, or topped with chopped vegetables and rolled into a kulcha served with garlic and chilli chutney.
And finally, Kalimpong Cheese. First made by a Swiss Jesuit priest, Father Andre Butty, it’s a kind of Gouda that used to be made in West Bengal’s Kalimpong Hills, but is very difficult to find and is now begging for a proper revival.
So, while we can all indulge in European cheeses, we cannot deny that “Indian Cheese Bada Hai Mast, Mast”.
Kunal Vijayakar is a food writer based in Mumbai. He tweets @kunalvijayakar and can be followed on Instagram @kunalvijayakar. His YouTube channel is called Khaane Mein Kya Hai. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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