Ricotta, mascarpone, mozzarella di bufala, fresh chevre, feta, creme fraiche and more are available in our city, and some of it hasn’t made its way here from Italy, France, or Greece. Over the last couple of years, Mumbai has had a fairly steady supply of un-aged, European-style craft cheese produced either in the city or elsewhere in the country.
Until a few years ago, a mere handful of people in Mumbai could talk about how mozzarella di bufala was an entirely different product from the standard processed and packaged stuff we put on our pizza. Now the balls of fresh, spongy, and easy-to-melt cheese are sold by two large dairy companies in north India: Dairy Craft (under the brand La Cremella) and Exito Gourmet (under the brand Impero). They have both figured out a way to get this cheese, known for its incredibly short shelf life, across the country into our city through a cold chain.
Closer home, we have cheesemakers who have decided to turn their passion project into a career. Karl Kothavala said he saw himself surrounded not by cargo pallets (which are part of his family business), but by creme fraiche. The founder of Say Cheese and Universal Kebab Kona (now in Sterling Cinema) started making cultured mascarpone two years ago when he found his grandma’s notes on cheese making. He grew a lactobacillus culture at home, and using YouTube videos, made his first batch of cheese. “I popped it into the cream and swirled it,” he says. ”When I saw that it was set the next morning, it was a Eureka moment.” For Mansi Jasani of The Cheese Collective, cheese-making goals were driven by goat’s milk. “No one was making fresh goat’s milk cheese,” she says. “Anyone can make fresh cheese at home.”
The operative word is “fresh”. Fresh cheese, which has not been aged, is much simpler to make, and requires less time and investment than an aged cheese, such as cheddar or gouda, even though it is more sensitive to time and temperature. “The biggest challenge with making bocconcini and mozzarella di bufala [is not production but] building a relationship of trust with our dairy farmers,” says Vijay Juneja, director of production at Dairy Craft. The company’s suppliers are small farmers who own between two to six buffaloes each. Dairy Craft has to make sure the bovines get the right feed, and even offers insurance against lower yields of milk. Of the 30,000 litres of buffalo milk processed by the company every day, only 1,000 is used towards mozzarella. The milk is chilled, pasteurised and chilled again. Enzymes called rennet are added, the set curds are cut to release the whey, and then it’s cooked or “washed” with hot water to make the stretchy cheese. This is then shaped into balls by machines that make them look like they are handmade.
Indian-made, European-style cheese may seem like a niche market at the moment, but it’s growing fast. Three years ago Exito Gourmet made one tonne of cheese a month. Nowadays, it’s more like 20 tonnes. “Imported cheese is harder to get, and more expensive,” says Puneet Gupta, the CEO of Exito Gourmet. “We decided to make it not just because it’s easy to make but because there is a growing demand for it.” Kothavala, meanwhile, has expanded his offerings to include Philly-style cream cheese, creme fraiche, and Boursin-style garlic and herb spreadable cheese. Jasani is planning to set up a temperature-controlled room and start aging her chevre. “Our local cheese is still a long way from a truly European flavour,” she says. “But all cheese in the world started like this, with people making it at home.”
Roshni Bajaj Sanghvi is a Mumbai-based food journalist, a contributing editor at Vogue magazine, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York City, and the restaurant reviewer for the Hindustan Times newspaper in Mumbai.