India is the next great cheese frontier

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. I was in my early teens in the early 1990s when I began pestering my mother for a treat that everyone in America, from President Clinton to Spider-Man, seemed to eat pretty much daily. Living in Bombay (now Mumbai), my understanding of American mores came almost entirely from comic books and news reports, but I could be persuasive.

Finally, my mother relented. We would make pizza. I was dispatched to our local bakery to buy the dough.

For tomato sauce, there was ketchup. For toppings, sliced onions and green bell peppers. But what about the cheese? My mother brought milk to a boil, then curdled it with lemon juice.

She drained the whey and pressed the remaining white mass into a block. This was paneer, or “cottage cheese." White as summer clouds, it was the only cheese I had ever eaten, usually as cubes in curries. Once the paneer had set in the fridge, my mother grated small squiggles onto the pizza and ushered it into our little oven.

Ten minutes later, the pizza emerged. I lifted a slice to my mouth and closed my eyes. Upon the crunchy wood-smoked bread, gloriously gloopy ketchup and lightly charred vegetables, the paneer was unmelted and inelastic.

But it was hot and dense, chalky and crumbly. It had kept its integrity in an unfamiliar system, the anchor of a nifty piece of mom-provisation. It was heaven.

That moment came to mind on a recent visit to a supermarket in the southern city of Chennai. Ten years ago, most western-style cheeses in India were imports, enjoyed by a small elite. Now, alongside tins of mozzarella, Parmesan and cream cheese from dairy behemoths Nestlé and Amul—the latter a large cooperative of Indian dairy farmers—the shelves are bright with Indian-made Edams,