There’s something initially distressing about “fresh cheeses.” It suggests the alternative can only be un-fresh—old, compromised, dried out, maybe spoiled cheese. But in Cheeseland age matters. The passage of time is one of the defining influences on a cheese’s final flavor and texture so for a cheese to be called “fresh” merely refers to its lack of age.
And like the dewy and youthful among us, fresh cheeses can be compared with their older cheese brethren in several ways:
Despite these generalizations there are quite a few kinds of fresh cheese, and the milk from which they’re made, combined with the a few tweaks to the cheese making process, yield crumbly and creamy, stretchy and sliceable, milky and pickled cheeses . As such you can do quite a lot with them and serve up enormous variety within this one group.
The first step of cheese making is to curdle milk by adding acidifying bacteria. These “starters” convert the milk sugar (lactose) into lactic acid. After this a coagulant such as rennet is added to mesh the milk proteins, turning liquid milk into solid curd. Cheeses that undergo a long, slow acidification process (one that can take many hours, even as long as a day) are more fragile and delicate in texture than the rubbery curd created when milk is boiled and acidified or curdled with a larger dose of rennet. Hence you can wind up with gelatinous fresh goat cheese on the one hand and slice-able paneer on the other. Both are “fresh.”
Other cheese making choices turn out wildly differing mozzarella and feta. In the case of the first, rubbery curd is dipped into hot water and kneaded and stretched until smooth and elastic while in the case of the second curd particles are immersed and brine and pickled, rendering a previously perishable cheese practically indestructible.
Fresh cheeses arc in flavor from sweet and milky to satisfyingly cheese-y (if rather non-descript) to tart to seawatery. Starting with the universally known and loved mozzarella.
Cheese geeks argue that the only “real” mozzarella is mozzarella di bufala, made in southern Italy from the fat and protein rich milk of the water buffalo. Even harder core curd nerds argue that this cheese is so perishable that it’s not worth eating unless you eat it in Campagna within hours of production. When you find buffalo mozzarella here it tends to be gamier in flavor than firmer cow’s milk options. For the bovine version seek out “fresh” (ie water packed or recently pulled) mozzarella rather than cryovac’d blocks in the dairy case.
Paneer, a fresh cheese of northern India, is produced by acidifying milk heated to near boiling, then pressing the compact, relatively dry curd to further reduce moisture. The resulting cheese is firm and springy, and can be cut into slabs and included in stewy dishes without losing its shape or clean, tangy flavor.
Being mere steps away from milk, fresh cheese is an ideal vehicle for differentiating the character and flavor of various animal milks. Fresh goat cheese at its best is moist yet crumbly, with a bright, lemony tartness and clean, milky finish. At its worst its an extruded glue with aggressive acidity or “goaty” flavor like the musk of a billy goat during mating season. A reliable and readily available line is Vermont Creamery, who make plain and flavored versions in logs, cups or crumbles.
The big, bad flavor driver of the freshies is good old feta. Real feta is Greek, and made from a mixture of high fat sheep milk and tangy goat milk, which together create a complexity and mouthfeel that’s briny and substantial. French and Balkan options take their cue from the original. Sadly, much of the “feta” you’ll find is cow’s milk, precrumbled, salt-dust. The extra money for authentic feta is well spent. You’ll be buying a cheese, not a finishing season. You can make your own brine (think: salinity of sea water) for leftover hunks and it will bob happily in your fridge for 3-4 weeks as long as its submerged.