Here is another guest post from my wonderful and very erudite friend, Charles Perry. It is just as fascinating as the previous two, although I can’t quite believe it is completely safe to eat. Perhaps I will try making some now that I am back home and spending all summer in London.
Charles Perry: When people make cheese, they curdle milk and press out the whey to make a less inviting environment for bacteria that would spoil it. But in medieval Baghdad, they had another method. They mixed milk, yogurt and salt, put it in a tub — open to the sky — on their rooftops in the hottest part of summer and left it there till October. You’ve just got time to start a batch!
I suspect the reason for this odd technique had to do with a shortage of cool cellars for ageing cheese in Baghdad. In fact, you don’t really need the outdoor location or summer heat. I’ve made kâmakh rîjâl in my dining room, where it was quite the conversation piece, I can tell you.
The recipe still works just fine. It comes out smelling a bit like Cheddar, though with a semi-liquid consistency. It’s really a cheese spread, not a slicing cheese, and people often added garlic, mint or thyme, as we still do with spreadable cheeses such as Boursin. Since this was the Middle Ages, they as often added spices instead. I’ve tried cinnamon kâmakh rîjâl, and I must say it had a mysterious charm. Rose petals, though, were a little too exotic for me.
At any rate, it needs no special equipment, just a mixing bowl and a spoon, so you really can do this yourself. All you need to do is stir it up once a day and add more milk from time to time to make up for evaporation.
Here’s how you make it. Mix 1 part yogurt with 1 part salt and 5 parts milk. Apart from the daily stirring and occasional topping up with more milk, that’s all the work involved.
It starts smelling cheesy after three weeks, and then really, really cheesy around week six, and you can actually use it as a spread by then. The medieval recipes say to age it 14 or 16 weeks, though, and the flavor does become richer and a bit less sharp and salty if you do. Flavorings can be added at week 12.
How does this work? The flavor of cheese is produced by bacteria which are indigenous to milk. The reason that milk doesn’t automatically turn into cheese if you let it sit around is that more aggressive bacteria from the air will spoil it before the cheese bacteria have a chance to do their work. In kâmakh rîjâl, the salt and the lactic acid of the yogurt create the necessary hostile environment to repel bad bacteria.
The kamakh rijal in the photo is 12 weeks old. Since it was aged indoors, rather than on a rooftop in the middle of summer, I alternated fresh milk and evaporated milk to give a thicker texture.
Note: This recipe is for the entertainment of consenting adults only. I can’t guarantee that it will always produce a safe result, but the batches I’ve made were fine and the fact that the recipe was widespread in the Middle Ages suggests that it is safe.
Anissa: Thank you Charles. It is definitely a recipe for consenting adults. As I said, I shall be making it this summer and will report on my progress if, that is, I live to tell the tale!
