WHY EVERYONE LOVES THE BURRATA

Burrata, the big ball of creamy cheese first invented to prevent wastage, is now showing up on menus across India

- Priyadarshini Nandy

The burrata, a big dumpling of cheese, makes for excellent conversation, whether it's about the subtlety of flavour, the familiarity in texture-it does remind one of malai-how good it looks on the plate, and so ontill you bite into it and your mouth is filled with a burst of pure creaminess. Then you just need to savour the delicate flavour of the cheese, the way it coats your tongue, leaving a film of cream.

If you grew up in a household that made its own chhena (farmer's cheese or unripened curd cheese), you may remember balls of clean white muslin dangling in the kitchen and the faint aroma of curdled milk. The burrata does remind one of that ball of white muslin, somewhat vaguely.

Today, it finds place on menus across the country, from lavish chaats in a posh Delhi restaurant to a pizza in Jaipur, a salad in Mumbai and the main feature on a dish at a Bengaluru restaurant. Its sheer flexibility is giving two of the most commonly used cheeses-the mozzarella and briestiff competition.

When Dishkiyaoon, the erstwhile Indian restaurant at Mumbai's Bandra Kurla Complex, opened in 2016, it introduced burrata in its menu. One of the partners, Gaurav Dabrai, says many restaurateurs told them they were ahead of their time. "And now, everywhere you look, it's burrata porn. At the moment, the burrata is the avocado of cheeses."

Dabrai believes one reason could be availability, apart from greater awareness of the wide range of gourmet cheeses. For commercial, home-grown brands such as Cremeitalia, The Spotted Cow Fromagerie, Highland Farms, Bengaluru's Vallombrosa Cheese Shop and Begum Victoria are bringing burrata to the HoReCa (hotels, restaurants, cafés) market.