COUNTRY FOCUS: INDIA

Despite its size and love of dairy, India is not renowned for its cheese – save for its fresh varieties. But a new generation of well-traveled, small-scale producers is combining the country’s own ancient traditions with European techniques and adding more than a pinch of provenance.

Words by Amrita Amesur Illustrations by Jamie Coe

AS FAR INTO the past as one can look back, India is and has indisputably been a dairy country. From the pastoral Indus Valley Civilization to the sophisticated food era in the Vedic times, milk and its derivatives were among the most important dietary elements in ancient India. Even now, the hold of Ayurvedic principles is strong – with the consumption of milk, ghee, curds and fresh cheeses like paneer holding an irreplaceable space in the home.

The Vedas describe a process of curdling milk by mixing it with a portion of soured milk, which is the ancient equivalent of adding starter culture in the making of acidcoagulated fresh cheeses. Cheeses formed through the technique of heat and coagulation can therefore be said to have existed in India for thousands of years.

The indigenous cheeses coming out of India today bear striking resemblance to those made by wandering pastoral communities of the past – by way of heating high-altitude milk derived from their flock, coagulation through acid or whey and treating fresh cheese curds, in the manner traditionally developed and made by their ancestors.

There is the stringy, stretchy Kaladi cheese from the Jammu & Kashmir region developed by the semi-nomadic Gujjar tribe, the sour Chhurpi made by Tibetan communities across the eastern Himalayan belt, the salty, crumbly colonial Portuguese-era Bandel from Bengal

From left to right: Eleftheria’s burrata; feta; a selection including the Brunost that won Silver at the 2021 World Cheese Awards

and of course, the most popular of all: paneer.

But even as one of the world’s most significant milk-producing countries, India’s development of ripened, aged, rennetcoagulated cheese varieties has been distinctly absent. But there is a good reason: the concept of cheese ripening – amounting to a controlled rotting – violates the very deeply engrained tenets of food purity and hygienic food preparations preached by the Vedas.

The tropical heat and wet monsoons of the sub-continent hardly provided scope, especially in a pre-refrigeration era, to control maturation of milk-based products. Meanwhile, the use of animal-based rennet remains problematic in a country like India where animals are revered as gods – especially the cow. This is the primary reason why even the artisanal cheesemakers coming up in India today have shied away from using animal rennet, and maintain a strict code of using plant-based vegetarian enzymes to curdle their milk.

Despite the challenges, a new crop of artisan cheesemakers in India – largely trained in European cheesemaking techniques – is making waves with locally sourced, handmade and farmstead cheeses. These producers are well-traveled individuals, having lived abroad with plenty of access to fromageries, and they returned home to find a vacuum that needed addressing.

Mausam Narang Jotwani learned how to make cheese in the UK, and practiced it as a hobby before founding Eleftheria Cheese in Mumbai in 2016, specializing in fresh cows’ milk pasta filata cheeses like burrata, fiore de latte and straciatella. Eleftheria, along with other contemporaries like The Spotted Cow Fromagerie tapped into a new market, and has transformed the restaurant menu landscape: most high-end eateries in Mumbai now offer burrata salads on their menu. “Chefs were very excited about getting access to fresh cheeses in the city because they no longer had to wait a couple of days to receive it from out of town,” says Jotwani, adding that most creameries were previously in remote hillside towns with access to good dairy.

For prominent cheesemonger Mansi Jasani, based on the isle of Bombay, the shift came naturally. “The new crop of cheesemakers made it accessible and available at a good consistent quality and price.

“It was also more of a lifestyle change that occurred during Covid, where people wanted to cook gourmet food at home and sought access to artisanal cheeses – which then opened up the avenue of selling directly to customers.”

Obvious as it may sound, seeking out high quality milk in the city was key to Jotwani being able to create these cheeses in an environment where Europeanstyle cheesemaking is still very much in its infancy. “Artisanal cheese, at the end of the day, is just milk,” she says. “Since cheesemaking happens at a much lower temperature than the usual milk consumed in homes, it becomes very tricky to explain that to the dairy farmer – you can’t give the cattle microbiotics, can’t inject hormones, the feed has to be of a certain quality – so it was a lot of education and knowledge sharing that went into acquiring high quality milk which paid off in the long run.”

By contrast, it was the daisy-strewn hills of the Himalayan Mashrobra valley that drew Indo-French couple, Debarati Nandee and Francois Laederich, to set up production there. Partnering with local villagers to source grass-fed cows’ milk, they developed a range of cheddar- and fontina-style Himalayan cheeses, aged on pine wood. Laederich stresses the importance of terroir, insisting that it is those flavours that make their product stand apart from the rest.

“Cows grazing on wild flowers and basil in the summer will be reflected in the taste of the cheese,” he says. “It will never taste exactly the same. As the seasons change, it will reflect the terroir of the grass eaten by the cows.”

Nandee adds the couple is not striving for their Amiksas brand to be in supermarkets, and they work very intentionally with retailers whose values are aligned. Major retailers

Cows grazing on wild flowers and basil in the summer will be reflected in the taste of the cheese

Amiska cheese is produced according to traditional French techniques in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, in the Himalayas

in India charge high listing fees just to place the product on their shelves and have neither the wherewithal or the knowhow to handle, store or transport delicate artisanal cheeses. What they also lack is staff trained in cheesemongering to guide customers on their purchases. This has spurred plenty of cheesemakers to build their own distribution channels to sell their products.

Darima Farms in the Kumaoni hills of Uttarakhand similarly sources milk from single-cow households in villages around the hills, paying a premium to these farmers to boost the regional economy. They also employ and train young women from the region in the craft of cheesemaking, having consciously avoided hiring a foreign cheesemaker.

Further north along the steep hills of Jammu & Kashmir, there’s been a revival of the local Kaladi cheese, historically made only by the pastoral Gujjar tribal community using their excess winter milk supply. Upon seeing the harsh living conditions of the Gujjars, a Dutchman named Chris Zandee set up a small factory outside of Srinagar, employing women from the Gujjar community to create their Kaladi, giving them a respectable source of income while helping to put their product on the map under the Himalayan Cheese brand.

Inspired by childhood memories of Kaladi kulcha (warm flat bread served with stringy fatty kaladi cheese) hot off a street cart in Jammu, Shria Abrol and her husband, Pranav Gupta, have similarly forayed into making hand-crafted kaladi using high quality locally sourced buffalo milk. They named their cheese after their family dairy brand, Surya Milk. “The texture of kaladi is a lot like halloumi and mozzarella”, says Abrol. “It’s stringy, stretchy and tastes rich in milk. As it ages, it also starts to acquire a harder exterior shell and a sour flavour profile, whereas the inside remains gooey and soft.” Their efforts to promote Kaladi beyond the regional markets of Jammu have yielded a surprising new demand from upmarket chefs and restaurateurs, who always seek local indigenous ingredients to work with. “Markets in India have changed so much, chefs are so open to try something that’s handmade and artisanal. They’re looking forward to local things, rather than just buying a pack of commercial mozzarella,” says Abrol.

In an interesting turn of events, India’s cheesemakers have begun evolving from and going beyond re-creating European style cheeses. Darima Farms, for instance, has developed a local spice-rubbed young cheese named Zarai. Co-founder Arvind Chawla says partner Pritam Bhatti came up with Zarai, a mix of gouda and montasio – a European hard cheese with a spice rub of fenugreek and mustard. It has subtle spice flavours which help develop notes of walnut.

In a similar vein, Eleftheria launched a Norwegian-style Brunost to incorporate all of the excess whey being generated at the fromagerie. The cheese went on to win a Silver at the World Cheese Awards. In comparison to the Norwegian Brunost, the one developed by Jotwani is said to be far more caramelised and deeper in flavour, just as would be preferred by Indian palates that are used to reduced milk peda, or fudge.

Käse Cheese, based in Chennai, is working with a goat herding community in Gujarat, having developed a range of artisanal cheeses to support the pastoral Maldhari community in Saurashtra.

The Farm, Chennai, has an impressive list of fresh, smoked, aged and bloomy rind cheeses named after local spots, like the Queso Coromandel and the Tomme de Semanchari, to signify provenance.

The Spotted Cow has also cleverly assigned names for its French cheeses, named after the isle of Bombay where it is based – the Camembay, Bombrie and Tomme de Bombai.

While Indian cheesemakers are employing the knowledge and techniques of the west, they are creating cheeses that are distinctively their own. The use of local milk that carries the flavour of the terroir, high quality Indian spices and herbs incorporated cleverly into the cheese, all create products that are not just European imitations.

Despite all of the positives, India’s burgeoning cheesemaking scene isn’t devoid of issues. As a whole, according to Jasani, the requisite ecosystem for producers to thrive is still lacking. Logistics and transportation are problematic, as European style cheeses are unsuitable for storage and cross country

The texture of kaladi is a lot like mozzarella. It’s stringy, stretchy and tastes rich in milk.

INDIAN CHEESES TO TRACK DOWN

Belper Knolle with Kerala black pepper, Himalayan pink salt and locally sourced garlic – made by Eleftheria Cheese, Bombay.

Zarai from Darima Farms in Uttarakhand. Cows’ milk, spice-infused, aged.

Bombrie from The Spotted Cow Fromagerie, Bombay. Cows’ milk, briestyle, bloomy rind.

Tomme de Semanchari

from The Farm, Chennai. Raw cows’ milk, aged, Tomme-style cheese.

Also from The Farm, is Queso Coromandel. Buffalo milk, inspired by Spanish Manchego-style cheese.

Kaladi by Surya Milk, in Jammu. Buffalo milk, traditional regional stringy, stretchy cheese.

Fontina style by Amiksa Cheese, semi-aged, cow milk made in Mashobra, Himachal.

Formaggio No 3 by Kumaoni Blessings, in Himachal. Asiago-style cheese, semi-aged, cow milk, Manali, Himachal

Bandel Cheese’s The Whole Hog. Cows’ milk, smoked, made in Kolkata.

Ode to Chennai. A cheddar-style cheese crusted with South Indian Spice Milgai Podi. Made by Käse Cheese in Chennai.

transportation in the country’s climate. It often costs more than the retail price of the cheese to transport it overnight. Not to mention the packaging itself being cost heavy, with ample gel packs for insurance, which nonetheless don’t assure safe cold passage. “What is the point of painstakingly making good quality cheese if it’s just going to get ruined during transportation or through bad handling?” says Jasani.

Problems with logistics are just the tip of the iceberg. Lack of access of good milk (which, when it is available, can only really be bought in industrial size vats), cultures and rennet, as well as gaps in education on how to manage, handle and treat cheese mean that the processed product industry stands a much better chance than artisanal producers do. “A small cheesemaker can’t even contemplate such an amount,” she says. Instead, the cheese industry needs to band together to create a more conducive atmosphere which can facilitate the progress of the various stakeholders.

Physicist-turnedcheesemaker Aditya Raghavan – who has helped develop cheeses for The Farm, in Chennai and Begum Victoria, in Bangalore –says the problem is that India is flooded with Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) that hold most of the market share.

“The customer is inundated with these brands and they much prefer to buy the triedand-tested brands of processed cheese, like Amul, or at best an imported cheese for special occasions. It’s this cheese that brings them comfort.”

Artisan cheese remains a luxury good in a country like India. With rampant inflation and the high cost of quality milk, cheese is at best an indulgence affordable only for a small portion of the population of India. And, because the idea of aged, ripened cheeses

So far, there is still a simplistic mindset with regards to cheese here

and the manner of their consumption is a high-brow activity, it’s still only the domain of those who’ve lived abroad or had regular access to international travel.

An average Indian, even one well-versed in food and cooking, is still largely unaware of cheese culture and remains oblivious to its nuances.

Yet, there is reason to hope, as more regional and city-based cheesemakers emerge, given the ever-expanding middle class and restaurant going culture reaching an all-time high. Perhaps cheese is on its way to becoming India’s new wine.

The Montasio produced by artisan cheesemaker Darima Farms, founded by husband and wife Arvind Chawla and Pritam Bhatti, is aged for three months with either chillies, garlic or a combination of the two