I breastfed my four children and I like to experiment in the kitchen but I never thought about combining my two hobbies. Last week, New York City chef Daniel Angerer curdled his wife’s breast milk and has since had private tastings with New York City food critics.
Apparently, it didn’t taste that good and while they do sell a cheese plate at their downtown restaurant, the home-grown variety was not on the menu. It’s against Department of Health regulations. That said, Lori Mason, wife and milk supplier, told New York Post reporters that her breast-cheese (I can’t remember what she called it) is much healthier than cow cheese because she eats a better diet than other lactating mammals.
I once tasted my own breast milk once just to see what my kids loved so much. It didn’t taste like milk or like formula. It had its own unique taste. Sort of like sweet vanilla soy milk, but not quite that either. It could have had something to do with the things I ingested, which included among other things espresso in the morning, cocktails in the evenings, and lots of chocolate-chip cookie dough ice cream cones with extra sprinkles. (I had a decent diet otherwise but I was so tired with babies number two and three—twins—I needed the morning jolt along with the evening drink and felt I deserved the daily ice cream.) Breastcheese mom Lori Mason claims to eat organic which could explain her bland cheese.
Angerer said making the cheese was similar to making it from cows but a bit trickier.
He told the BBC, “it’s just a process like any other cheese and I started thinking there’s a curding process and aging and the best part is the tasting process.” He fiddled with several types, some more with a ricotta consistency others closer to cheddar.
Wall Street Journal food critic Raymond Sokolov got a private tasting (they cannot bring it to the restaurant so Angerer has been doling out breastcheese in his apartment) and said it “has a surprising amount of personality.” It was served on a brioche with a pickle. He said it was elastic but he expected cottage cheese. Why? Sokolov was excited with this assignment because he was formula fed and never tasted the real stuff.
New York restaurant critic Gael Greene, who was breastfed, called it bland and said Mason’s breastcheese has the texture of panna cotta.
For anyone interested, I found a website that gives simple instructions on making cheese from milk. I think they were talking about the cow kind. But it just takes a bit of boiling, lemon juice, and gathering the clumps together afterward.
The amazing thing is the hoopla about breast-cheese-mom's culinary experiment. We’re not quite sure whether it’s sexy or cannibalistic. Maybe the allure is that it’s both. I guess if we’re pumping it and freezing it, you might as well curdle it. Do I see a market for home-made breastcheese makers?
