Budz (будз, Fresh Carpathian Sheep Cheese)

The first cheese from a Carpathian sheep vat is still warm when you taste it. It is not salty yet, not sharp, not the crumbly brynza people know from market tubs; it is a springy white lump with sweet whey on its surface, milk caught just before it chooses a stronger life.

This is Hutsul mountain food, born on the polonyna, the high pasture, not on my southern steppe. I cook it at home because Ukraine is not one pot: the south has brined aubergines and whole watermelons in the litnya kuhnia, the summer kitchen; the Carpathians have sheep, grass, smoke, and women who know exactly when curd has set by the way it resists the knife.

The one thing that decides budz is gentleness after the rennet. Warm the milk enough to wake it, stir the rennet in, then stop fussing. Cut the curd only when it gives a clean break, cook it until the whey turns from milk-cloudy to green-gold, then gather it warm so it knits into a soft round instead of falling into cottage cheese. Aunt Nadia would have called that 'until it sounds right'; here the sound is the curds brushing the pot like wet pebbles.

Eat it fresh, with dill, radishes, dark bread, and Ukraine in a bottle of oil. Salt it and wait, and you're walking toward brynza. But today we're staying at the young stage, when the cheese still tastes of grass and morning.