Express News Service
A lack of culinary imagination has made paneer ubiquitous. But unbeknownst to most, India has been churning out regional variants of cheese for centuries—iterations that’ve never gotten their due. Things are now changing. Cheese varieties that had become obscure are slowly being picked up by chefs and restaurateurs around the country. With phrases like ‘going back to the roots’ and ‘eating local’ being bandied about, Indian cheese is enjoying the sort of celebrity status a Roquefort has in a French cave. A hitherto unknown cheese board full of regional Indian variants has made its national entry. Hopefully, enough to keep aside the Camembert and brie for a while.
Smokin’ good
A savoury derivative of the Portuguese-introduced chhena—the split cow’s milk cheese used in most Bengali sweets—the chewy bandel from West Bengal is different from its progenitor in two ways. First, it is thoroughly salted and then sun-dried into circular disks. Second, it is often smoked over coconut husks for a more Italian scamorza-like intense flavour. It’s best enjoyed on its own as a snack and not added to any dish.
Topli nu paneer
With the recent nod of the Food Safety and Standard Authority of India on the declaration of the yak as a food animal, the spotlight is now on yak milk churrpi, which is also a salted and dried cheese. Made from yak buttermilk, Ladakhi churrpi—believed to be a good source of calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, zinc and vitamins—is found in regions along India’s Himalayan belt, as well as in Tibet, Bhutan and Nepal, where it is known as churu. It is made like ricotta by boiling the buttermilk, until the milk solids separate from the whey. This results in a soft mass that is drained and then pressed under heavy weights, till it morphs into a hard, unyielding cheese.
It was in 2013 that Radhika Khandelwal, chef-owner of the Delhi and Goa outposts of the Fig & Maple…
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