Hunting down Kalimpong cheese and bringing it home

Umesh Anand

IN a networked world, nothing, it seems, can ever go missing forever. Not even Kalimpong cheese. It was with great satisfaction, therefore, that we cheered the arrival in Gurugram of 500 gm and then 1 kg of this delectable cheese.

A dedicated hunt on the internet finally led us to one of the few existing producers of the cheese. That it did the journey of 1,500 km from a tiny village unscathed and in good condition to be eaten is a tribute to the wondrous communications of our times. You can get anything from anywhere.

Once a cherished product for its unique texture and flavour, Kalimpong cheese has fallen off the map and faded from popular memory — as indeed perhaps has Kalimpong which is a small town in an arcadian setting on the peripheries of Darjeeling in West Bengal.

As is only natural, the longer the gap the more difficult it is to rediscover the original thing. Restaurants wind up. Recipes go through mutations. Products get pushed off shelves. Communities go into turmoil. Cooks and master makers pass away over time, taking their culinary secrets with them. 

Our half-kg being weighed

So also with Kalimpong cheese. There was a time it flourished and was savoured and then it gradually withdrew from sight. For all the iconic standing it once had, it is remembered now only by a dwindling tribe of Calcuttans for whom this special-tasting cheese used to be de rigueur on the breakfast table.

Kiran Karnik, our columnist and friend, is one such aficionado. A sudden yearning for Kalimpong cheese prompted Kiran to drop us an email a couple of weeks ago. Did we know about Kalimpong cheese and where it could be found? He hadn’t had it in years, but he wanted it now and how! He was asking us because he knew we track rural foods and products in this magazine.

But, unknown to Kiran, there was another good reason to ask us. We grew up eating Kalimpong cheese in Calcutta. Like Kiran, we too hadn’t had it in years. But this was a worthy cause to pursue. A reliable source of supply of Kalimpong cheese would be invaluable for Kiran and us and also for our many readers.

A series of phone calls followed. A colleague who spends months hanging out in Darjeeling was asked, but he said his wife had tried to buy the cheese there — without success. It wasn’t in production anymore, they were told. Calls to Calcutta zeroed in on Keventers outside New Market as a possible store to buy it. But Keventers there and here in Delhi sells only bottled milk and such products. At Nature’s Soul, an organic food store in Delhi, they said they hadn’t heard of it.

Finally, searches on the internet threw up the name of Samuel Yonzon at the Makarios Bous Farm. He and a few others were making the cheese in a village outside Kalimpong — not just as a rural enterprise, but to keep the cheese-making tradition alive.

And the vacuum-packed cheese ready to be shipped

When we called Yonzon he was tending to his cows and politely asked if he could call back later when he could address our query.

Yonzon did get back and it was agreed that he would sell us 500 gm of Kalimpong cheese for `800, inclusive of the courier charges. It would reach in two separate packs of 250 gm each, one for Kiran and one for us.

An invoice followed on WhatsApp and the payment was made over Google Pay. Then, at every stage Yonzon kept us updated with photos: Cheese packed, cheese being weighed, cheese labelled, cheese handed over to the courier with tracking number.

Days later, in Gurugram, we were all tucking into the cheese and planning to order more — which we did in much the same way. And it was even better than the first consignment.

Kiran’s family recalls that a few drops of oil had formed around the edge which they attribute to the 1,500-km journey during the worst of the heat wave. It is for them a “comfort cheese” — not overly sharp or acidic, no overpowering aroma.

“Expect to get your fingers oily — a thick-butter feel — as you slice the cheese. That said, the texture is moderate: not flaky, but not creamy either. It is a mildly aromatic cheese, exuding a meadow-like, slightly milky, smell. The taste, too, is rustic, more earthy than sharp. In other words, you realise right away that this is not one of those factory-processed, big-brand items. Savour the cheese by itself, alternatively, atop bread or crackers that are not heavily flavoured,” they say.