How to make mother’s milk cheese
In a previous post we read about chef Daniel Angerer POSSIBLY serving human breast milk cheese at his trendy NYC restaurant. Below is the recipe for this soft, sorta gelatinous cheese.
Chelsea Chef Makes Cheese Made from Breast Milk
www.myfoxny.com | BY LUKE FUNK | 09 Mar 2010
MYFOXNY.COM – A chef at a trendy Chelsea bistro has produced cheese made from his wife’s breast milk.
The New York Post reported Tuesday that he had been offering it to customers.
In a phone interview on Good Day New York, chef Daniel Angerer said he is not actually serving it in the restaurant. This might be due to the fact that he admitted that he’s had several calls from the city health department since news of the breast milk cheese came to light.
Daniel Angerer runs Klee Brasserie in Chelsea. He had told a Post reporter that customers started demanding his custom-made “human cheese” after he blogged about his efforts to make it.
“The phone was ringing off the hook,” the chef explained to the paper. “So I prepared a little canape of breast milk cheese with figs and Hungarian pepper.”
The response among those who tried the cheese was described as generally positive, although many customers were too squeamish to attempt it.
New York health department said that even though codes do not explicitly forbid the practice, they advised Angerer to refrain from sharing his wife’s milk.
“The restaurant knows that cheese made from breast milk is not for public consumption, whether sold or given away,” a spokeswoman for the city Department of Health said to the Post
That hasn’t stopped Arabella from posting the recipe on his blog:
My Spouse’s Mommy Milk Cheese Making Experiment
(basic recipe using 8 cups of any milk – yields about ½ pound cheese)
4 cups mother’s milk
1½-teaspoon yogurt (must be active cultured yogurt)
1/8-tablet rennet (buy from supermarket, usually located in pudding section)
1 teaspoon sea salt such as Baline
1. Inoculate milk by heating fresh milk (68 degree Fahrenheit) then introduce starter bacteria (active yogurt) then let stand for 6 – 8 hours at room temperature, 68ºF covered with a lid. Bacteria will grow in this way and convert milk sugar (lactose) to lactic acid. You can detect its presence by the tart/sour taste.
2. After inoculating the milk heat to 86 degrees Fahrenheit then add rennet (I use tablets which I dissolve in water) and stir throughout. Cover pot and don’t disturb for an hour until “clean break stage” is achieved, meaning with a clean spoon lift a small piece of curd out of the milk – if it is still soft and gel-like let pot stand for an hour longer. If curds “break clean” cut with a knife into a squares (cut inside the pot a ½-inch cube pattern).
3. Raise temperature slowly continuously stirring with a pastry spatula (this will prevent clumping of cut curd). This is what I call the “ricotta stage” if you like this kind of fresh cheese – here it is. For cheese with a little bit more of texture heat curds to 92 degree Fahrenheit – for soft curd cheese, or as high 102oF for very firm cheese. The heating of the curd makes all the difference in the consistency of the cheese. When heated the curd looks almost like scrambled eggs at this point (curd should be at bottom of pot in whey liquid).
4. Pour curd through a fine strainer (this will separate curd from whey) then transfer into a bowl and add salt and mix with a pastry spatula (this will prevent curd from spoiling). Whey can be drank – it is quite healthy and its protein is very efficiently absorbed into the blood stream making it a sought-after product in shakes for bodybuilders.
5. Give curd shape by lining a container with cheese cloth (allow any excess of cheese cloth to hang over edges of container). Transfer drained, warm curd in the cheese cloth lined container (I used a large plastic quart containers like a large Chinese take- out soup container and cut 4 holes in the bottom with the tip of my knife). Fold excess cheese cloth over top of cheese then weight curd down (with second container filled with water or such) then store in refrigerator (14 hours or so – put container into a second larger container – this will catch draining whey liquid).
6. Take pressed curd out of container (flip container upside-down then unwrap carefully not to damage structure of pressed curd). Rewrap pressed curd with new cheese cloth then age in refrigerator for several weeks (cheese will form a light brown skin around week two – this is normal). Age cheese longer for a more pronounced/sharper cheese flavor.