Paneer is old news. A new generation of Indian cheesemakers is wowing global palates with their Gouda and Edam.
Anuradha Krishnamoorthy, left, and Namrata Sundaresan in the cheese aging room at Käse in Chennai, India, on Aug. 27. Photographs by Sayan Hazra for WSJ
I was in my early teens in the early 1990s when I began pestering my mother for a treat that everyone in America, from President Clinton to Spider-Man, seemed to eat pretty much daily. Living in Bombay (now Mumbai), my understanding of American mores came almost entirely from comic books and news reports, but I could be persuasive. Finally, my mother relented. We would make pizza.
I was dispatched to our local bakery to buy the dough. For tomato sauce, there was ketchup. For toppings, sliced onions and green bell peppers. But what about the cheese? My mother brought milk to a boil, then curdled it with lemon juice. She drained the whey and pressed the remaining white mass into a block. This was paneer, or “cottage cheese.” White as summer clouds, it was the only cheese I had ever eaten, usually as cubes in curries. Once the paneer had set in the fridge, my mother grated small squiggles onto the pizza and ushered it into our little oven.
Ten minutes later, the pizza emerged. I lifted a slice to my mouth and closed my eyes. Upon the crunchy wood-smoked bread, gloriously gloopy ketchup and lightly charred vegetables, the paneer was unmelted and inelastic. But it was hot and dense, chalky and crumbly. It had kept its integrity in an unfamiliar system, the anchor of a nifty piece of mom-provisation. It was heaven.
An upscale restaurant in Chennai prepares a pizza with grated mozzarella and halloumi cheese cubes. Mozzarella is increasingly popular in Indian cuisine, particularly in urban areas.
That moment came to mind on a recent visit to a supermarket in the southern city of Chennai. Ten years ago, most western-style cheeses in India were imports, enjoyed by a small elite. Now, alongside tins of mozzarella, Parmesan and cream cheese from dairy behemoths Nestlé and Amul—the latter a large cooperative of Indian dairy farmers—the shelves are bright with Indian-made Edams, Emmentals, Goudas, goat cheeses and Indian takes on cheddar and brie, infused with cumin, chili or black pepper.
Even accounting for the changing tastes of globalized Indians, the scale of this transformation is astounding. Paneer, once the mainstay of Indian cheese, now seems passé. Instead, western-style cheese—golden, glamorous and finally within reach of a rapidly growing middle-class—has become an aspirational sign of progress. It can now be found not only in sandwiches and pasta sauces, but atop traditional Indian street snacks such as dosas (crepes with rice-flour batter) and parathas (flatbreads, often stuffed with minced vegetables). Domino’s in India cleverly bridges old and new with its “Cheese Volcano Peppy Paneer Pizza,” which features grilled paneer upon a base of melted mozzarella.
As the largest producer and consumer of milk products in the world, India’s well-established dairy market is worth about $26 billion and is growing at about 7% a year. But the domestic market for cheese, now worth about $1 billion, is exploding at a rate of 21% a year. By all accounts, India is the next great frontier in cheese.
A new culture of culturing
Why has milk-obsessed India, with its sophisticated culture of milk fermentation and reduction, come so late to cheese? Ancient Indian religious texts are filled with references to cows and dairy. Milk runs through Indian mythology and folklore. Yet the country’s reverence for cows may have also held it back. Sacred animals come with all manner of proscriptions. The great 20th-century food historian K.T. Achaya notes that ancient Indians had a taboo “on deliberate milk curdling.” Cheese-making also historically required animal rennet, which is usually extracted from the stomach tissue of calves—a no-go for Hindus, who have long shunned the killing or eating of cows.
There were also more practical reasons for the late arrival of cheese in India. Yogurt, made daily in almost every Indian household, requires warm weather to ferment. Cheese needs cold weather to mature. Aged and hard cheeses have long come from cold countries. With mountains above and grazing cows below, the Alps were perfect for cheese. In balmier climes, from Greece eastward, cheese was made mostly for immediate consumption, such as feta and halloumi, and was often preserved in brine.
By the time the map got to India, cheese pretty much fell off it. Milk featured prominently, but it was usually drunk straight up before it spoiled, or used to make butter, yogurt and sweets. Even paneer is relatively new. The practice of “breaking” or “tearing” milk with acids, food historians believe, arrived with the Portuguese in the 17th century.
Yogish, owner of a fast-food center in Bengaluru, prepares a cheese masala dosa on Aug. 29.
Photos advertise the food available at Kempegowda International Airport in Bengaluru.
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