Bandel cheese
Small, salty, often smoked discs of cheese from Bengal, a survival of the Portuguese settlement at Bandel.
Also: Bandel, ব্যান্ডেল চিজ
Bandel cheese is one of the few traditional ripened cheeses of India. It is named after Bandel on the Hooghly river in West Bengal, where Portuguese settlers founded a colony in the sixteenth century, and the cheese is thought to have been made for them by local cooks. Cow milk is set with acid, and the curd is pressed into small perforated baskets, which leave a pattern on the surface. The small discs are then salted and either left plain or smoked, giving a dry, crumbly, very salty cheese. Today it is made by a handful of families near Tarakeswar and sold in Kolkata's New Market. It is often soaked before use and crumbled over salads or eaten as it is.