Home > Food > Mozzarella of the East: Milk Cakes （乳饼）


Mozzarella of the East: Milk Cakes （乳饼）
Ru (乳) in this context means `milk`. Bing (饼) means `a round
flat cake` or by extension `something shaped like a cake`,
so rubing is `a cake made of milk`. Rubing comes in fist-sized cakes, shaped like a rounded brick, creamy white in colour, and with a spongy texture. It is made in the Jianchuan and Heqing areas mainly, though there are individuals outside those areas who produce it too. Traditionally, rubing is made of goat's milk, and this is still the case in Heqing, but in Jianchuan, cow's milk is often used in its place. In fact, the Bai term for rubing, youdbap, means `goat's milk`. Every day buses transport rubing to Dali and Xiaguan to be sold in the markets. The Bai normally slice rubing and fry it in shallow oil. It is then eaten with a sprinkling of salt or sugar. It has the property of not melting when heated. Sometimes it is coated in a batter of egg and cornflour, and deep-fried. If eaten raw, it tastes a little like mozzarella. It is considered a special dish which is served to guests or eaten at banquets.
Pix
A Bai person uses a press to squeeze the cube of fresh rubing.

To make rubing, the milk is first boiled well, and then when taken off the heat, a souring agent is added which causes the milk to curdle. The souring agent is extracted from the dried stems and leaves of a cultivated vine. The dried plant matter is boiled up to produce the agent, which has a bitter-sour flavour, and is called naiteng (a Chinese term meaning 'milk-vine'). The curdled milk is then warmed up a little more to accelerate the process, and the milk quickly separates into white curds and yellowish whey. The curds look and taste like cottage cheese, and are sometimes eaten without further preparation, usually by children, with sugar added.

The curds are scooped up and poured into a handkerchief-sized cloth. The cloth is then wrapped around the curds and pressed tightly to squeeze out the whey. The tightly wrapped cube of cheese is then placed in a press. The press consists of two rectangular pieces of wood, each about half a metre long and five centimetres wide. There is a bolt running through a hole at each end of the pair of boards, tightened by wing nuts, to apply even pressure. In this way the pieces of wood can be joined together and tightened, applying pressure to the bags of rubing between them. The rubing is left in the press for several hours to squeeze out any remaining liquid. After this, the cheese is ready to eat. The left-over whey is very nutritious and is fed to pigs.


Excerpted from: Allen, Bryan. 2002. Make Boluo de yihan: Ji Zhongguo shaoshu minzu de nailao [What Marco Polo missed: The cheese of China’s ethnic minority peoples]. (Liu Xiaofeng, trans.) Ethnic Guide 266. 35-37.