Cheese in Eastern/Southeast Asian Cuisines

[zilla369]

Okay....I'm finally starting this topic after years of wondering exactly why there aren't more Eastern/Southeast Asian dishes that feature cheese (and dairy products, to a lesser extent).

I asked this question of my basic skills instructor in culinary school, and he said "well, probably because a lot of people of Asian descent are somewhat lactose intolerant." I didn't really buy that answer then, and I certainly don't buy it now, after a couple years of perusing eGullet.

So, what gives? No cheese-n-pasta/noodles? No cream-based miso soups? No sushi rolls with goat cheese?

Eastern and Southeast Asian cultures raise cows, and eat beef.

I'm very afraid the answers to this topic might be obvious and make me seem clueless for asking, but....let them rip! I've been curious about this for so long!

[SuzySushi]

Your culinary instructor is most likely correct. Many people of Asian descent are lactose intolerant, and dairy products are not part of their culture.

Cattle were raised in ancient China, but their main purpose was as draught animals. For the most part, the Japanese didn't eat beef until after Commodore Perry opened Japan to the West in 1853.

[Apicio]

No large scale dairy and cattle industry. We have to look to Australia and New Zealand for that. Indonesia and the Philippines have a few recipes, mostly desserts, that call for cheese (aged Edam or Gouda), butter and evaporated milk due mostly to Spanish, Dutch and American influence. We have lots of savoury recipes using all types of taofu and coconut milk though.

India and vicinity on the other hand has a varied and sophisticated cuisine utilizing milk and butter.

[Kent Wang]

Only recently (1960 or so) did Chinese start drinking milk. We've still yet to incorporate it into cuisine though.

[Pan]

I agree that cattle are hardly omnipresent in Southeast Asia, especially as compared with India. Cows do exist in Malaysia, but were traditionally used to pull ox carts and for meat -- as far as I know, never for milk. And as of some 30 years ago, beef was uncommon and expensive, whereas goat and waterbuffalo (not to mention pork, for non-Muslims) were more common, and fish was by far the main source of protein for most people. Milk meant either canned sweetened condensed milk, for use in coffee or tea, or evaporated milk, which I don't remember people using much. I don't know if that answered your question, though. But I can tell you that as a 10-to-12-year-old in the Malaysian public school system (Sekolah Kebangsaan), I had a glass of teh o (black tea with sugar and no milk) during recess every day, and the choices were pretty much teh o or te susu (tea with sweetened, condensed milk). It's no wonder that milk was not a choice in the school canteen, which had no 24-hour electricity and, therefore, no refrigeration, but the absence of milk there or any time I visited anyone's house surely shows something about rural Terengganu culture c. 1975.

[eje]

I think it Yak Milk anyway is part of cuisine and culture in Mongolia. Is that considered Asia? I also seem to recall the late Paul Pena sharing some sort of Yak Milk based moonshine in "Genghis Blues" which takes place in Tuva (Southern Siberia).

[Yuki]

I am wondering about the prevalence of lactose intolerant in the Asian population since the younger generations are exposed to milk(fresh and powdered), ice cream, cheese, and yogurt. I think that even when lactose intolerant is common among the Asians, most people can consume diary without any problem(well, maybe they will see the effect after drinking 4L of milk ).

[Tepee]

To add to what Michael said, indeed, in Malaysia, rearing beef cattle is considered easier than dairy cattle. And, according to this source,

Comparing ruminant and non-ruminant sectors, it is the non-ruminant sector that has made greatest progress over the last three decades. This is reflected in Malaysia’s self-sufficiency in pork, poultry meat and eggs..... In contrast, ruminant production has recorded poor growth rates and current beef, goat meat and mutton requirements are largely met by imports.

If you look at the milk section in our supermarket, all the milk sold are reconstituted from concentrates . For 'real' milk sourced from Australia, we have to pay a premium. Let's not even go into cheese.

It is true that many adult chinese grow more lactose intolerant as they age (post 50's); I'm sure there are statistics out there. I'm just crossing my fingers that it won't happen to me coz I love all things dairy.

[torakris]

Though you won't find most dairy products in traditional Japanese food, you will find it used almost daily in modern kitchens.

The dairy in Japan thread

[wesza]

I am familiar with "Airag" a Mongolian dairy treat made from "Fermented Mares Milk" it is customarily served together with Cheese made from Sheep, Goats or Cows Milk covered with cream. A sweetened Yogurt beverage is also offered regularly.

The only time I tried this I wasn't able to discern the actual tastes of the Cheeses, did find the Yogurt tasty but only had a polite superficial taste of the Fermented Mares Milk, even though my friend had several servings and felt it next morning.

There were several variations of Boiled Lamb Casseroles that were rather bland cooked a long time and oily. It was served with a porridge that may have been from maize but was interesting.

I was glad that we had brought "Dumplings" from a vendor on impulse as everyone enjoyed them especially me together with the popular Soy Beverage and the Wine we brought.

This was during a stopover in Harbin, China where I had a acquaintance who wanted to visit his family at a Mongolian community.

I was told that Dairy products were regularly served traditionally in Mongolia as it was a important factor in herders diets.

Irwin

[anzu]

Re the first statement about people in Eastern Asia eating beef, so why don't they drink milk?

Actually, you traditionally find very few people in Eastern or much of Southeast Asia eating beef.

As Suzy pointed out, Japanese traditionally did not eat beef until Commander Perry went to Japan. In China, Vietnam, etc., beef was very rarely eaten. In both cases, the aversion to eating beef was introduced with Buddhism. Of course, many branches of Buddhism advocate avoiding all meat. However, the roots of Buddhism lie in Hinduism, and some of the basic principles of Hinduism have been carried over very strongly into Buddhism. So cattle symbolize motherhood (the cow nuturing the young with its milk), as well as agricultural usefulness (cattle drawing ploughs, pulling carts, etc.) The fact that it is more likely to have been water buffalo in many places rather than cattle that were used for ploughing, etc. does nothing to change the symbolism of the cow. Eating cattle comes across as churlish and ungrateful to the cow.

On top of that, some Buddhists find it a greater sin to kill a larger animal than a smaller one. So fish for example are far more acceptable than cows as food. This is not universal: in Tibet, the number of lives lost is the issue, and so eating beef is far more acceptable than, say, a dish made up of numerous prawns, each of which represent individual lives lost.

The aversion to beef eating was so strong in traditional Japan that, if you read accounts from the late 1800s, when the new Meiji government was advocating the consumption of beef to 'make people strong', you will realize how utterly conflicted many people were by this advice. You can actually read of grandparents crying when they cooked beef dhishes to feed their grandchildren, because they found the whole idea so upsetting. I have read that 'sukiyaki' which literally means 'cooking on a plough' was developed so that beef did not have to be cooked in the house on normal utensils, as it was considered that this would render those normal utensils impure.

Finally, moving away from beef and onto milk: another reason why the drinking of milk did not become popular in much of East and Southeast Asia is patterns of land use and the higher relative costs of keeping cows for milk. If you go to certain parts of these countries, literally every bit of land that can possibly be cultivated is already under cultivation. Depending on the season, this will mostly be either rice or other vegetable crops. There is simply no space for cattle to graze, and the grass they eat would traditionally have been used for other purposes which would give a greater yield, such as feeding pigs, for example. Feeding grain to cattle would be unforgivably wasteful.

If you travel through Japan, for example, you will see a lot of countryside but, with the exception of Hokkaido (which you can think of as a very sweeping generalisation as Japan's Mid-West in that it has more wide-open space than most of Japan, and was only widely settled in the comparitively recent past), you will still see very few cows. Land is simply too precious to be 'wasted' on cattle.

In those areas where climate is less conducive to cultivation, but does allow the herding of sheep, yaks, etc. you will indeed find milk being drunk, being made into cheese, cream, yogurt, etc.

If you are going to compare the usage of dairy products between India and East and South-east Asia, a couple of things should be borne in mind:

Hinduism and the symbolism of the cow exerts a huge influence on dairy consumption. As a couple of examples, milk-based sweets are consumed not just for flavor, but also because of their symbolic religious value. They will be offered at temples, for festivals, etc. Butter appears in connection with Krishna, etc. There's plenty more, but I'm already pretty verbose , so I'll stop.

Additionally, although 'wealth' might not be the first word to spring to mind in connection with India, agriculturally India as a whole did in the past enjoy greater well-being than much of East and South-east Asia. There was enough space and enough fodder to go around to support a larger number of cattle. The importance of this factor is quite striking when you compare Hinduism in India and Bali, which does not share India's wealth of space, etc.

[Pan]

[...]Additionally, although 'wealth' might not be the first word to spring to mind in connection with India, agriculturally India as a whole did in the past enjoy greater well-being than much of East and South-east Asia. There was enough space and enough fodder to go around to support a larger number of cattle. The importance of this factor is quite striking when you compare Hinduism in India and Bali, which does not share India's wealth of space, etc.

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Islands like Bali and peninsulas like the Malay Peninsula have also traditionally depended on the sea for a lot of their sustenance.