Thought for Food

Breast milk cheese. Seriously. Created by Chef Daniel Angerer with his wife’s milk. He served it at his restaurant until the NYC Health Department shut him down.

But Gael Greene got a taste. She writes:

After tasting his wife’s milk from its natural vessel—“I was breastfed myself so I have that taste for it”—his mind went immediately to fromage. A little rennet. A clean cloth. Some aging. Simple, like any cheese. “It’s not like I was making Reblochon,” he wrote. “That would be trickier.”

His confession drew fans and bitter attacks on his blog. He was even accused of cannibalism.

That ultimate taboo in my head, the cheese arrives. I contemplate the tiny cream-colored square—doll size, barely enough to satisfy Minnie Mouse. It rides in on two house-made pickle rounds nesting on a thin slice of bread. I take… a bite. Eeeeew!

Surprise. It’s not the flavor that shocks me—indeed, it is quite bland, slightly sweet, the mild taste overwhelmed by the accompanying apricot preserves and a sprinkle of paprika. It’s the unexpected texture that’s so off-putting. Strangely soft, bouncy, like panna cotta.

Of course, Angerer’s ultimate critic is the food source itself. He wanted his wife to try her cheese, he tells me when I call him after my human lunch. “I gave her a taste but I didn’t tell her what it was.” And she liked it. “Well, we had a bottle of Riesling,” he adds, “and it worked very well with that.”

There’s room for experimentation: His wife is a vegetarian. If she ate meat, her cheese would have a different flavor, we agreed.

(Via @elizabethbard.)