There’s no possibility whatsoever that this fairly basic recipe would have been missing from the repertoire of the tai-Sesmenni family’s master cook and baker Tik, whose culinary exploits are described in The Landlady. It almost certainly contributed to the “twice baked cheese roll” that appears at one point in the text.

In those parts of the Middle Kingdoms where dairying is most important—particularly midlands Darthen (where the tai-Sesmennis’ holding is located) and northern Steldin—cheesemaking is routinely seen as the best way to preserve milk for out-of-season use. This process routinely produces various by-products, particularly whey (which mostly gets fed to the pigs or applied to crops as a fertilizer).

Another thing that routinely happens adjacent to this process, however, is the discovery that after that last cheese is cooked (or otherwise processed), wrapped, and finally put away for the long business of curing, you’ve still got extra curd left over.

(Or you may have a household cow… and honestly, there’s only so much milk you can drink when she’s been in calf but the calf’s gone on to grass. Even if you’re lucky enough to have a largish family to help you, or a local market to bring it to.)

This is where the “green cheeses” come in. Fresh, uncured, (normally) whole-milk cheeses that would have been called “green cheese” because of that freshness are as common in the Four Realms (and in the Ladhain lands) as they are on our own Earth. Here the casual terminology has mostly fallen out of modern English-language usage, except when it turns up in jokes about the Moon… these usually based on the likeness of any given round white cheese to our nearest significant astronomical body. But the cheeses are still very much here, covering a broad spectrum of culinary possibilities between unripened cream-heavy cheeses such as Mascarpone (or cream cheese itself) through to pressed curd cheeses such as “farmer cheese,” or central European types like tvarog. Even cottage cheese counts as a “green cheese” (though it may not look much like the Moon until you start tinkering with it).

This tart recipe depends on the presence of at least a couple of green cheeses: a cream cheese very like our full-fat Philadelphia, and a coarser-curded, drier cheese similar to farmer cheese, small-curd cottage cheese, or tvarog. These are beaten together with eggs and egg yolks, and then seasoned as the baker prefers—sweet and savory versions both being popular in the Kingdoms.

A green cheese tart will work as well with spicy ingredients (such as chiles, a popular variant all over the Realms, though especially nearer to Steldin) as it will with sweet ones. Consider the tart a blank canvas on which your own dramas of flavor can be enacted. 

See the recipe card below for details.