More cheese, please: Mumbai cheesemaker says Indians want funkier, flavourful varieties now

Making cheese is a journey with endless experimentation and it only ends when the final product is just the way a cheesemaker wants it. City-based cheesemaker Mausam Narang, who recently won the silver at the World Cheese Awards held in Spain for her Brunost cheese, will agree. The award is a result of two years of tireless work, during which she didn't think her creation would take off, before its final launch right before the pandemic. It was all worth it because a year later, she is the recipient of an important award that is not only a personal accomplishment but also holds the potential to inspire many amateur artisanal cheesemakers in India.

Especially because Narang, who first started making cheese in 2013, says she has seen an encouraging growth spurt in the artisanal cheese space. "It has grown in the last couple of years and especially during the pandemic, when a lot of cheesemakers started selling small batches of cheese online because people wanted gourmet food delivered to their doorstep and to make cheese platters."

A cheesy affair
When Narang first began selling cheese in 2015, she says her brand Eleftheria Cheese was the only one making mozzarella and burrata in the city. "There were only people in the north and south, who were making cheese and that's how it came into restaurants in the city," she remembers. Now, more than five years later, her brand is supplying to 50 odd restaurants including The Bombay Canteen, St Regis Mumbai, The Taj Hotels, Americano and Cincin in the city, and some in Delhi and Pune too.

Cheese making has come a long way since then because there are cheesemakers in different parts of the country who are making use of indigenous milk to make their cheese. Narang observes that these aren't the run-of-the-mill west-inspired varieties but instead their own creations. These cheeses not only have indigenous milk but also local ingredients including herbs and spices, which the Mumbai-based cheesemaker says is pretty heartening to see.

Narang talks from experience because just before the Brunost, Eleftheria launched Belper Knoller, a Swiss cheese with crushed garlic and Himalayan pink salt that is coated in black pepper. The cheese, which almost looks like a truffle, was well received by people. This reaction was different from the ones she received for the cheeses she made in her early days. She explains, "People's palates are changing and they want to experiment a little more and they are pushing us to create funkier cheeses and that is pretty cool. Now we get people who tell us, ‘Why don't you make blue cheese or washed rind?' And we think, ‘wow this is exciting'."

Brunost for the win
The idea for the new award-winning cheese came to Narang in 2018. "At the time, we were making a lot of mozzarella cheese and burrata because our production had increased due to an increase in demand," informs the cheesemaker. The increased cheese production meant she was left with a lot of cheese whey, a by-product of the process. "In cow milk, there is 87 percent water and 13 percent milk solids, so all of that whey would go to waste because we were making so much cheese." Believing in zero-waste production, she decided to look for ways to use the by-product. That is how Eleftheria's Brunost -- a brown cheese made by caramelising whey -- came to be.

The artisanal cheesemaker had been exposed to this Norwegian delicacy a few years earlier. She says, "My friend had brought a hunk of the cheese from Norway and I tasted it. After I decided to make it, the experimentation took really long - about two and a half to three years, for me to finally be satisfied with the texture and flavour profile." Narang describes the cheese as one that tastes like salted caramel milk fudge and is unlike most cheeses people are used to. The cheesemaker says she introduces it as a ‘peda' to people.

No two cheeses can be the same, Narang says. So while her Brunost is inspired by the Norwegian counterpart, this version is different because the milk isn't the same. The city-based cheesemaker says she uses milk from indigenous cows in the city and the final result of the process is that the cheese is denser, creamier and a little more complex in flavour. She explains, "It is a little sweet, salty and almost savoury. It is sweet because of the inherent lactose in the whey and salty because of the minerality in the whey through the calcium phosphate that caramelises and gives a beautiful flavour to it." Throughout the pandemic, the cheese has managed to make its way into many kitchens in the city to not only be used while cooking but also to make cheesecakes and caramel or be included in cheese platters and be eaten for breakfast.

Ask Narang what prompted her to enter the competition, which she has been wanting to attempt for more than two years, and she says, "I sent (the entry) thinking, "Why can't Indian cheeses be put on the world map? We have good quality milk here and are one of the largest producers of milk too." Even though artisanal cheesemaking is still picking up, Narang says it is the only way forward. "It does take some time to understand and hone the craft of making cheese but we have diligent and determined cheesemakers. It is only a matter of time before you see them up there and it is only going to get interesting from now on in India," says a hopeful Narang.

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