Milk (37 page)

T
hough by now it should be clear that cultured buttermilk is “buttermilk” only by courtesy, it can be both flavorful and useful in its own right. If only manufacturers and consumers had more respect for it as an excellent food instead of some kind of dieter’s ration to be tortured into a travesty of honest sour milk! Make up a batch at home with some good unhomogenized whole milk, and you will get an inkling of what it can taste like. Even homogenized whole milk will give you buttermilk with more body and flavor than the usual supermarket brands.

As long as supermarket buttermilk contains live cultures (and says so on the label), it is your ticket to better things—meaning home culturing of milk and cream for fresh cheeses as well as good versions of cultured sour cream and buttermilk. As with cheeses, I see no reason for sending away to a specialty supply company for cultures when you have this perfectly respectable source of mesophilic bacteria. Try to check expiration dates and delivery schedules in order to buy the buttermilk as fresh as possible.

YIELD:
1 quart

Culturing will take place a little faster if you begin by warming the milk to between 85° and 90°F. But it will happen sooner or later as long as the ambient temperature stays above about 70°F (preferably a little warmer). In any case, mix the milk and buttermilk and let stand undisturbed at room temperature, loosely covered, until the milk thickens slightly and the taste is lightly but distinctly sour (usually between 12 and 18 hours). Store in the refrigerator, tightly covered, for up to about a week. As with yogurt, you can use the last of one batch as starter for another, though—also like yogurt—it loses some bacterial activity with long keeping.

VARIATIONS:
You can make cultured buttermilk from either all skim milk, whole milk mixed with skim in any desired proportion, or whole milk mixed with half-and-half (nonultrapasteurized, please) in any desired proportion.

I usually don’t add salt, but if you like, mix in anything from a pinch to half a teaspoon per quart after culturing. If you have used unhomogenized milk, stir the top cream into the rest of the buttermilk before drinking or using.

C
all it “Homemade Crème Fraîche” if you like, though the name is a stretch. A major difference between American
commercial sour cream and the better versions of crème fraîche sold in this country is that the latter are made from richer cream and don’t need the extraneous thickeners that manufacturers add to offset the relative thinness of sour cream.

Make sour cream at home without such disguises, using light cream that contains the usual commercial minimum of 18 percent milkfat, and you will end up with something that tastes okay but has little body. Make it with heavy cream as suggested here, and you’ll see what you’ve been missing.

As for flavor—well, sour cream inoculated with cultured buttermilk has great sour cream flavor. Will it taste just like your favorite brand of crème fraîche? Probably not. Today’s American makers often play around with different combinations of mesophilic bacteria in order to bring out certain notes of fragrance and flavor in the finished crème fraîche. This is one case in which real perfectionists may want to try ordering a direct-set culture from a cheese-supply company (
this page
). Remember, however, that the mixture of bacteria you end up buying may or may not resemble that used by a
particular crème fraîche maker. Meanwhile, you can rejoice in the ease of making really excellent sour cream.

As always, check labels for the presence of live bacteria—which is why you can’t just use commercial sour cream or crème fraîche to inoculate cream for your own. Usually they have been pasteurized or subjected to some heat treatment after packaging, thereby inactivating any cultures. If you find a brand that works, you’re luckier than I’ve been.

YIELD:
2 cups

Mix the cream and buttermilk and let stand undisturbed at room temperature (70° to 80°F, preferably above 75°F) until thickened and lightly soured, just as for the preceding Homemade Cultured Buttermilk. Refrigerate, tightly covered, for up to a week.

F
or centuries both soured milk (or cream) and salt fish were eaten by everyone in the
Northeastern Cow Belt—peasants and princes, shtetl dwellers and their oppressors. Together they formed one of the region’s archetypal flavor marriages. The pairing of cured herring and sour cream crossed the Atlantic along with Ashkenazic Jews, Poles of all religious beliefs, and assorted
Scandinavians. It even made it to American soi-disant “gourmet” circles as an appetizer for a generation or so after herring with mild sweet-and-sour cures appeared for sale in jars around 1940. Then cured and pickled herring vanished from favor among the leaders of taste. Today there are all-purpose kitchen bibles, up-to-date
Jewish cookbooks, and even some would-be encyclopedic fish cookbooks with no mention of herring, period, let alone the once-popular combination with sour cream.

Please be persuaded to give this immensely satisfying appetizer another lease on life. There is a problem: finding the fish. You need to live within reach of an old-fashioned store selling cured herring in barrels to a Polish, German, Russian, Dutch, Eastern European
Jewish, or other ex-Baltic and North Sea clientele. Some Russian-American groceries sell decent pickled herring in large jars or plastic pouches. (Ignore all recipes that tell you to simply start with a jar of ordinary commercial pickled herring—one look at typical lists of ingredients should send you fleeing from these syrupy products.)

Try to buy fillets of plain salted herring. If you don’t see these labeled, are not clear on what different labels like “schmaltz” and “matjes” mean, or run into language barriers in the store, just get whatever looks appealing. If only whole herring are on sale, ask someone to fillet them for you. When you get home, taste what you’ve bought to see whether it’s powerfully salty, mild, or sweet-and-sour. You can get good results with any of these.

Fans of herring with sour cream are wholly non-unanimous on such details as the preferred variety of onion or how sweet or sour the sauce should be. I give the onion (the usual yellow kind) a brief preliminary soaking in slightly sweetened ice water to crisp it and take out a bit of the oniony sting, and I make the sour cream sauce fairly but not overpoweringly sweet. Taste as you go along and adjust the sugar and vinegar to your preference. The grated apple is a Polish touch that splendidly complements the fish and sour cream flavors.

YIELD:
4 to 6 servings as appetizer

First rinse the fish well under cold water and taste a tiny bit. If it is mild-flavored enough to be eaten as is, simply blot it dry and proceed. Otherwise, place it in a large bowl, cover well with cold water, and let soak, refrigerated, for anything from 2 to 24 hours. Change the water at frequent intervals, tasting the herring, until it is mild enough to suit your preference. Drain, blot thoroughly dry with plenty of paper towels, and cut into 1-inch pieces.

Slice the onion into paper-thin half moons and drop the slices into a bowl of ice water with 1 to 2 teaspoons of sugar dissolved in it. Let soak for about 5 minutes before draining and blotting thoroughly dry. Layer the herring and onion in a small glass or crockery bowl or container.

Put 2 tablespoons each of sugar and vinegar in a small nonreactive saucepan, and heat, stirring, just long enough to dissolve the sugar. Whisk the sour cream smooth in a bowl and whisk in the sugar-vinegar solution.

Peel and core the apple half, grate on the coarse side of a box grater, and stir into the sauce. Taste for salt (the herring after enough soaking will contribute next to no salt, so overkill is unlikely) and gradually mix in enough to balance the other flavors along with a little more vinegar if you like, or more sugar dissolved in a teaspoon or two of warm water. If desired, add horseradish or mustard to taste. (These are an improvement only if the fish needs perking up or no tasty apples are to be had.) Pour the sauce over the herring and onion and refrigerate, tightly covered, overnight or for at least 6 hours. Serve garnished with fresh dill. It is wonderful with coarse-textured black or sour rye bread.

M
ore properly, “smoked whitefish dip” or “spread”—but as a staple of New York Jewish brunch tables it’s universally known as “salad.” If you don’t already understand the harmony of smoked fish with something creamy and slightly sour, this simple combination is the perfect example. The only messy part is removing the whitefish bones, which are many and stubborn.

YIELD:
About 2½ cups

Remove and discard the skin and bones from the fish. Flake the meat with your fingers; you should have about 2 cups. Put it in a bowl and mix in enough sour cream for a spreadable consistency. Stir in the scallions, celery, and optional horseradish. Scoop the mixture into a serving bowl, sprinkle a little chopped dill over the top, and serve with coarse dark rye or pumpernickel bread. It will keep in the refrigerator, tightly covered, for two to three days.

I
t would be impossible to overstate the importance of utterly plain, bare-bones milk dishes in peasant diets throughout much of Europe well into the twentieth century. Bread or potatoes with milk or sour milk once made up a very quick square meal in millions of households from Ireland to Lithuania, Switzerland to Siberia. This caraway-spiked Austrian and Bavarian soup gives you an idea of just how minimalist a country breakfast or supper could be—though with well-flavored buttermilk and sturdy black bread I’d take it over American breakfast cereal and milk any day.

If you should go on a buttermaking kick and have some thick, tasty ripened buttermilk to dedicate to this purpose, you will be astonished at the goodness of the soup.

YIELD:
4 large servings

The bread must be hard and stale, so slice it and let it sit for a day or two before starting the soup.

Bring the water to a boil with the salt and caraway. Mix the flour to a smooth paste with a little of the buttermilk, then stir in the remaining buttermilk. (This keeps the soup from curdling.) Whisk the buttermilk into the water over medium heat and let come to a boil. Distribute the bread in serving bowls, pour the soup over it, and serve scattered with the herb of your choice.

VARIATION:
By thrifty consensus this soup was generally made with equal parts of buttermilk and water. You can, however, use all buttermilk. Stir the flour with a little of the buttermilk, combine with the rest, and add the salt and caraway. Heat just to a boil over low heat and serve as directed.

D
ecades ago, this recipe in
Michael Field’s Cooking School
(1965) provided my first glimpse of the magic that results when you combine fresh, slightly sour forms of milk or cream with strong, provocative flavors like garlic and pickling brine. It is still my favorite cold soup, though I now know that Field’s description “a poem of a Russian iced soup” needs some correcting. Russians call this and a family of similar soups
okroshka. Chłodnik
(pronounced roughly “huh-WOD-nik”) is the Polish counterpart (see
this page
for a gorgeous version with beets).

Over the years I have replaced Field’s canned shrimp with fresh shrimp and dropped the fennel that was in the original recipe. I also usually leave out the hard-boiled egg garnish (though it’s a classic part of such soups), and wilt the cucumbers in salt because they then marry better with the other flavors. Use sauerkraut juice from good delicatessen sauerkraut or a brand put up in glass jars or plastic pouches,
never
cans.

YIELD:
8 to 10 servings