FORKLORE : Cheese the Old-Fashioned Way

Where does cheese get its flavor? From bacteria native to milk. In fact, all milk would taste like cheese to begin with except that it takes these bacteria weeks to do their work, and they won’t do anything at refrigerator temperatures. Before they can work their magic, the milk would ordinarily be spoiled by less desirable microbes.

That’s why cheese makers curdle milk and press out most of the whey. The bad bugs prefer a moist environment, which is why cottage cheese spoils much faster than, say, Cheddar, and why a dry, hard grating cheese like Parmesan will keep for months.

There happens to be another way of preserving milk long enough to develop the cheese flavor. It is used in the peculiar Egyptian cheese called mish, which is aged in salted whey. And it was the essence of a relish called ka^makh ri^ja^l, which was popular throughout the medieval Middle East.

To make this stuff, you’d put about 3 gallons of milk, half a gallon of yogurt and 2 cups of salt in a giant hollow gourd. Then you’d stick it on your rooftop at the beginning of June. Every day throughout the summer, you’d go up on your roof and stir in more milk as needed until about the middle of September.

The milk was preserved partly by the salt, partly by the yogurt bacteria, which quickly produce enough acid to discourage most other microbes. Probably moisture evaporating through the skin of the gourd kept the yogurt from overheating so that the cheese bacteria could do their work.

Ka^makh ri^ja^l comes out as white as milk and has a texture between cottage cheese and soft custard, and because of the yogurt and salt, it’s salty and sharper than any Cheddar you’ve ever had. But the pungent smell is cheese all the way.