As a new dad, I can’t tell you how many times someone’s asked me if I’ve tried breast milk.  What kind of question is this?  My wife’s or other women’s?

Well, apparently, Daniel Angerer of NYC’s Klee decided to kick it up a notch and make cheese out of his wife’s.  He even provided a recipe.  How thoughtful!

City authorities sagely note, “The restaurant knows that cheese made from breast milk is not for public consumption,”  lest there be a stampede.

via Breast milk cheese on the menu in New York | Richard Adams | World news | guardian.co.uk.  Thanks, Julia.

Take four cups of breast milk, add rennet, salt and yoghurt – yes, four cups of breast milk, according to a recipe created by New York chef and restaurateur Daniel Angerer, who posted his formula for maple caramelized pumpkin encrusted cheese on his blog, and offered “whoever wants to try it is welcome to try it as long as supply lasts”.

Angerer runs the Manhattan restaurant Klee, and the breast milk is supplied by his wife and restaurant co-owner Lori Mason after the couple found they had an excess supply in their freezer intended for their baby daughter Arabella. Angerer explained on his blog:

“My spouse is feeding our baby with breast milk. We are fortunate to have plenty of pumped mommy’s milk on hand and we even freeze a good amount of it – my spouse actually thinks of donating some to an infant milk bank which could help little babies in Haiti and such but for the meantime (the milk bank requires check-ups which takes a little while) our small freezer ran out of space. To throw it out would be like wasting gold.”

So Angerer decided to experiment – “my over-stuffed home freezer and my natural cooking instincts made me think of making cheese out of (human) mother’s milk” – and posted the results on the internet.

“I was concerned a little bit with the thought of making cheese out of mother’s milk,” he wrote. “I wondered if it was ethnical – since I haven’t seen it on any restaurant menu yet. Conclusion – my spouse agreed – our baby has plenty back-up mother’s milk in the freezer so whoever wants to try it is welcome to try it as long as supply lasts (please consider cheese aging time).”

Angerer told the Toronto Star that customers at his restaurant have been asking to try the cheese and he has prepared some amuse-bouche – canapé of breast-milk cheese with figs and Hungarian pepper – but that he has no plans to sell it: “That weirds me out,” he said.

Of the two batches he’s made so far, the first tasted salty-sweet and the second was slightly spicy. “It depends on what my wife has eaten. That directs the flavour,” (eatgeek’s emphasis) he told the Star.

Lori Mason says the couple have been criticised for the recipe. “I think a lot of the criticism has to do with the combination of sex and cheese, but … the breast is there to make food,” she told the New York Post.

According to the Post, city authorities have told the restaurant to keep its breast milk cheese away from customers. “The restaurant knows that cheese made from breast milk is not for public consumption, whether sold or given away,” a spokeswoman for the city’s department of health said.

Two years ago the animal rights organisation Peta approached Ben and Jerry’s ice cream company with the idea of using breast milk instead of cow’s milk. That was too much even for the famously liberal Ben and Jerry’s, which turned it down.

The full recipe is on Angerer’s blog. Here’s the ingredients:

My Spouse’s Mommy Milk Cheese Making Experiment

(basic recipe using 8 cups of any milk – yields about ½ pound cheese)

• 4 cups mother’s milk
• 1½-teaspoon yogurt (must be active cultured yogurt)
• 1/8-tablet rennet (buy from supermarket, usually located in pudding section)
• 1 teaspoon sea salt