Dennys Links

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Unusual Outrageous New Food: Breast Milk Cheese

From Denny: When I saw this posted over at The Today Show site I have to admit it really was an Ewwwww! factor. My second thought was, "Who the hell would do something this crazy? A chef?" Turns out it isn't Hannibal Lector peddling human cheese. That's a relief. It is a chef though, by the name of Daniel Angerer of haute cuisine Klee Brasserie in New York city.

Hey, a good chef never wastes a good resource. In his case, his freezer was overflowing with his wife's breast milk by the time their daughter, Arabella, was four weeks old. “We are fortunate to have plenty of pumped mommy’s milk on hand, and we even freeze a good amount of it,” Angerer wrote on his Web site. “Our small freezer ran out of space. To throw it out would be like wasting gold.”

After talking his wife, Lori Mason, into his weird experiment, Angerer began experimenting with the breast milk. With two gallons of breast milk, some curdling and then aging for a few weeks he ended up with a cheese product very similar in taste to cow's milk cheese. OK, so now we have adjusted to this level of strange.

Up to the next level of strange and Angerer posted a recipe on his site for “My Spouse’s Mommy’s Milk Cheese.” Of course, the incredibly curious - or Momma's Boys who never grew up - started calling asking to sample the new cheese product.

Now flying high on the weird meter, Angerer was emboldened to offer an appetizer of breast-milk cheese with figs and Hungarian pepper at his restaurant, Klee Brasserie. The reactions are mixed. Some are generally positive. Read that as too polite to tell him the truth. The others are disgusted and can't get past the Ewwww! factor and are completely turned off. He never did say how the reactions divided down the gender line.

Guess who else is simply not amused? The New York City Health Department that states, "Angerer would be well-advised to stop offering his wife’s milk to the general public, even though there is no specific law on the books prohibiting it."

At this point I guess the breast milk wife is game for anything. She said the breast milk is about to dry up - so how about creating a recipe for breast milk gelato?

For the vote: Would you try breast milk cheese? To vote, go here.






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