Several years ago, TV cook Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall became somewhat notorious for cooking and eating pate made from placenta.
Now a chef in the US has gone one better in creating food out of the human body – he's used breast milk to create cheese. And he's planning to make more.
What do you think? Just right for a Ploughman's Lunch with a difference, or a taste too far? If it's OK for babies, then why not us?
Chef Daniel Angerer of New York City's Klee Brasserie made the cheese from the breast milk of his wife and business partner, Lori Mason. He told New York Magazine's Grub Street blog:"Being a chef you're curious about anything in terms of flavour – you look out for something new and what you can do with it." He adds: "It wasn't like, 'Hey, this is such an amazing cheese.' It's just like, 'Can you use human milk? Yes, you absolutely can!'"
So what does it taste like?
Angerer says that the taste is quite pleasant: "After two weeks' ageing, it was somewhat like a raw-milk cheese – it had all the flavours in there. It tastes just like really sweet cow's milk." Angerer says his wife's milk reminds him of the cow's milk that he had as a child in Austria.
He writes on his blog: "... 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 if this news has inspired you to whip up your own batch of mummy-flavoured fromage, the chef has posted the recipe on his blog here. And if you choose to share it with your family, that'd really be a way to celebrate Mother's Day with a difference.
What do you think of this? Would you eat breast-milk cheese? Would you try to make some with your own milk?