Milk

by Anne Mendelson

  Mince together the ginger, chile, and garlic until they are almost a paste. Heat the remaining 3 tablespoons of ghee or oil until rippling in a large deep skillet or medium saucepan. Add the optional cumin and mustard seeds. When the seeds start to pop, add the minced ginger paste, let it sizzle for 10 to 20 seconds, and add the onion. Cook uncovered over medium heat, stirring frequently, until the onion is well cooked, about 15 to 20 minutes. Add the optional tomato, and cook for another few minutes before stirring in the spinach and salt. Add the garam masala in any amount you prefer, from a large pinch to more than a teaspoon. Cook uncovered, stirring frequently, about 20 to 25 minutes, or until the spinach and onion have formed a dense, fragrant sauce and the fat is beginning to separate.

  Add the panir to the sauce and let heat through. Gently but thoroughly stir in ½ cup each of thick drained yogurt and heavy cream. Check the consistency and add a little more of one or both if desired. Serve with plain steamed basmati (or other) rice.

  “CORN KEES”

  (GUJARATI STOVETOP CORN PUDDING)

  This pretty dish originally came from a small Indian paperback, 100 Easy-to-Make Gujarati Dishes by Veena Shroff and Vanmala Desai. Our corn and watery milk undoubtedly produce a thinner, sweeter result than the starchy, filling corn and richer milk of India, so I replace some of the milk with cream and add a little starch in the form of wheat flour. To me, corn here seems plenty sweet without the added sugar, but this is a matter of individual taste.

  Asafetida, once available only in Indian grocery stores, now turns up in more venues (my local Whole Foods supermarket, for one). It deepens all the other flavors just as the turmeric deepens the color.

  Dishes like this are regularly made with either cows’ (or buffaloes’) milk or coconut milk; in both cases the milk brings out the “corny” quality of the corn. In a pinch you can substitute three 10-ounce packages of frozen corn kernels, first giving the corn a very short spin in a blender or food processor to bring out the juice while leaving the texture coarse.

  YIELD: 4 to 6 servings as main dish, 7 to 8 as side dish

  6 large ears of corn, shucked and cleaned

  6 small hot green chiles (any preferred kind)

  A 1-inch chunk of fresh ginger, peeled

  3 tablespoons ghee or vegetable oil

  ¼ teaspoon Indian brown mustard seeds

  1 tablespoon flour (optional)

  1½ cups milk and cream, combined in any preferred ratio (I use 1¼ cups milk and ¼ cup heavy cream)

  1 to 2 teaspoons salt, or to taste

  2 teaspoons sugar

  A pinch of ground asafetida

  ½ teaspoon ground turmeric

  Juice of 1 lemon

  Minced cilantro for garnish

  Cut and scrape the corn kernels from the ears with a sharp knife.

  Chop the chiles (deseeded if you prefer) and ginger together until they are almost a paste.

  Heat the ghee or oil in a deep wide skillet or sauté pan and add the mustard seeds. When they start to splutter and pop, add the corn and stir over pretty brisk heat for a few minutes. Add the optional flour, stirring well to eliminate lumps. Add the chile-ginger paste, milk-cream mixture, salt, sugar, asafetida, and turmeric. Cook uncovered over medium heat, stirring frequently, for about 15 minutes. The texture will thicken somewhat if you have used flour and remain a little runny otherwise. Remove from the heat, stir in the lemon juice, and serve garnished with a sprinkling of minced cilantro.

  VARIATION: To convert this into Spiced Corn Chowder, omit the flour and use 5 cups of the milk-cream mixture, 8 to 10 chiles, and a 2-inch chunk of ginger. Proceed as directed above, doubling the amount of all other seasonings and making any further adjustments when you taste the soup after it has come to a boil.

  IRISH CHAMP

  (MASHED POTATOES WITH MILK AND GREENS)

  In some parts of the Old World milk or buttermilk was very nearly the only everyday source of protein for poor people until modern times. Ireland, where millions would have starved if the family cow had starved, remained a case in point far later than most parts of England or Europe.

  When “Irish potatoes” arrived from the Americas, marriages of milk with the new vegetable proved to be a nutritional blessing to the nation. Supplementing these two ingredients with some green vegetable (usually spring onions or leeks, though young green nettles were also a favorite) put more vitamins into the mix and added a bit of fresh verve. This combination was called “champ,” and was a main dish—more accurately, an only dish, a meal in itself—on thousands of Irish tables for generations. Like many peasant standbys, it was usually served in one communal bowl that everyone dug into with his own spoon. I think it still makes a fine main dish for a simple meal, though of course no one today commands the services of a small Irish cow giving the excellent milk for which Ireland was once renowned. Anybody who can get good unhomogenized milk should use it here.

  The important principle in dishes like champ is that cooking anything oniony in milk creates an entirely different effect from sautéing it in butter. For champ, what you want is not a sautéed flavor but the one that results when the milk is directly infused with an oniony character (the same principle applies if you use some other kind of greens). In this way, the butter that’s added at the end will be a fresh touch of luxury not foreshadowed by anything else in the dish.

  Use either leeks or scallions, or (if you can get them) the fresh white bulb onions with green stalks still attached that are often sold as “spring onions” or “jumbo scallions.” Other possibilities: a large handful of chives, new peas, parsley, or—if you’re a field forager—young nettles.

  YIELD: About 6 servings (4 as a main dish)

  5 to 6 large russet or other mealy (baking-type) potatoes (about 1¾ to 2 pounds), peeled and cut into large chunks

  2 to 3 small leeks or medium spring onions or 6 large scallions, cleaned and trimmed; include an inch or two of the green part (more for scallions)

  2 cups whole milk, preferably unhomogenized

  Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

  4 to 8 tablespoons butter, cut into chunks

  Boil the potatoes in salted water until tender. While they are cooking, cut the chosen onion relatives into thin slices. Put them in a small saucepan, pour in the milk, and bring to a simmer. Cook, uncovered, until tender, about 10 to 15 minutes (a little less for scallions). Strain off the milk, return it to the pan, and keep it warm, reserving the onions separately.

  Drain the cooked potatoes and briefly return them to the pan over low heat to let them dry out a little, shaking the pan to prevent scorching. Put them in a large, deep bowl, and start mashing with a wooden spoon or potato masher. Mash in the drained onions while adding as much of the hot seasoned milk as the potatoes will absorb without getting soupy (the amount will vary according to the starchiness of the potatoes). Some lumps are all to the good. Season with salt and pepper to taste and serve at once, as hot as possible. Each person makes a well in his or her portion and puts in a lump of butter.

  SCALLOPED POTATOES

  Scalloped” is a culinary term for which no reasonable definition exists. As far as I understand, it murkily emerged late in the nineteenth century from a welter of antecedent words, including “collop” (a thin, cutletlike slice of meat), “escalope” (the French equivalent), and “scallop” (the mollusk). Many cooks came to apply it to things that were “escaloped” in the sense of being cut into slices, presented in a nice layered or overlapped serving arrangement. By the turn of the twentieth century, “scalloped potatoes” usually meant a sturdy standby made by building up layer on layer of sliced raw potatoes in a dish and baking them, covered with milk, until very tender.

  The dish takes well to a little jazzing up with onion and a salty accent like diced ham (a Swedish cousin, “Jansson’s Temptation,” is liberally seasoned with anchovies). But it really is only as good as the potatoes and the milk; you must remember that it originated in an age when many people dug t
heir own potatoes and attached real meaning to such terms as “rich milk” and “new milk.” If you’re stuck with supermarket homogenized milk, you might want to replace a little of it with half-and-half or light cream. As for the potatoes, they should be mealy to the nth power. Use a heavy hand with the salt.

  A slight soupiness and curdled appearance are perfectly normal for this dish.

  YIELD: 6 to 8 servings

  4 large mealy-type potatoes (russets—no substitutes)

  1 medium or 2 small onions

  3 tablespoons flour

  4 ounces smoked ham, coarsely diced (optional)

  1 tablespoon salt, or to taste

  Freshly ground black or white pepper

  Minced parsley (optional)

  3 to 4 tablespoons butter

  1½ cups (or as needed) milk, preferably unhomogenized (you can replace about ¼ cup of the milk with half-and-half or light cream)

  Preheat the oven to 350°F.

  Peel the potatoes and onion and cut into very thin slices. Butter a 2-quart baking dish, preferably wider than deep, and arrange a layer of potato slices over the bottom. Dust with a little of the flour. Scatter a little of the onion and optional ham over the potatoes; season plentifully with salt, pepper, and the optional parsley and dot with bits of butter. Add another layer of potatoes and continue in the same way, finishing with a layer of potatoes and any remaining butter. Pour enough milk over the potatoes to nearly but not quite cover them; the amount needed will vary with the shape of the baking dish.

  Bake, tightly covered with a lid or several layers of aluminum foil, for 40 to 45 minutes. Remove the cover and bake another 35 to 40 minutes, until the milk is nearly absorbed. Let stand for 5 to 10 minutes before serving.

  CREAMED SPINACH, MADAME SAINT-ANGE

  (ÉPINARDS À LA CRÈME)

  Fans of creamed spinach are legion, but they all seem to understand something different by the term, from a little spinach in a lot of white sauce to a lot of spinach with a little reduced cream. Neither of these exactly takes my fancy. I think that for many spinach lovers the following recipe by the great twentieth-century French cookbook-writer E. Saint-Ange will come as a revelation. The main thing that sets it apart from other versions good, bad, or indifferent is adding plenty of butter to the hot spinach at the last minute so that it has no time to lose its just-melted suavity.

  This is my general take on the sturdy classic with measurements given in standard American units. Experienced cooks will understand that before cooking, the spinach should be rinsed and lightly shaken to remove excess moisture, and that today’s equivalent of pushing a pan to the corner of an old-fashioned range is putting it on a burner over very low heat. The ever-methodical Madame Saint-Ange notes, “The cream used here can be replaced by the same amount of milk, reduced by half,” and gives estimated total preparation time as “one and a quarter hours, including all prior preparations.”

  (For anyone interested in further pursuing the acquaintance of La Bonne Cuisine de Madame Saint-Ange I recommend Paul Aratow’s complete translation.)

  YIELD: 7 to 8 servings

  3 to 3½ pounds spinach (gross weight, before trimming)

  3 ounces (6 tablespoons) butter

  scant 2 tablespoons flour

  ⅞ cup cream (or 1¾ cups milk, reduced to ⅞ cup)

  Salt

  Pepper

  Nutmeg

  Large pinch of granulated sugar

  Put about 1 tablespoon of the butter in a medium-size “sauteuse” pan; add the spinach and wilt on high heat, stirring it, for 4 or 5 minutes.

  Remove from the heat. Season with: a good pinch of salt; the pinch of granulated sugar; a small pinch of pepper and grated nutmeg. Dust with the flour, mix well, and stir again on the heat for just 2 minutes.

  Now add the cream, little by little, and off the heat. Next let it come to the boil, stirring continually. Then remove the pan to the corner of the stove. Cover and let it gently simmer for 20 to 30 minutes. This part of the cooking can also be done in the oven: in that case, place a round of buttered [parchment] paper over the spinach under the lid. Just a few seconds before serving, add to the spinach what you have left of the butter, by small bits. From that moment do not let boil. If the spinach has to wait a little while, it would be best to put off adding the butter, and not to do this until the very [last] moment: otherwise it loses its creamy effect.

  [Once the spinach is arranged in a serving dish, Madame Saint-Ange suggests garnishing it with small triangular butter-fried croutons or sprinkling it with 5 to 6 tablespoons of hot cream, seasoned with a small pinch of fine salt.]

  CHINESE “FRIED MILK”

  The popular idea that the Chinese have always shunned milk products is quite inaccurate. So is the notion that lactose intolerance accounts for the very widespread modern Chinese dislike of milk, butter, and any dairy product that doesn’t come out of a can. The French historian Françoise Sabban exposed these mistakes more than twenty years ago. As she shows, descriptions of milking practices, dairy products, and the use of milk in cooking are routinely found in many sources, including agricultural and culinary treatises from the sixth to the eighteenth century.

  Why the dominant Han Chinese ethnic population eventually developed an aversion to the mere idea of tasting milk or butter, and why the use of these foods became almost entirely limited to a few ethnic minorities in the Mongol or Uighur outposts of the empire, are among the great puzzles of history. Certainly the use of cows’ milk today is a piece of Westernization that has penetrated very unevenly into Chinese society. But in recent times an intriguing dish called “fried milk” has achieved currency in some of the areas most deeply affected by European contact, chiefly in Kwangtung (Canton) province and Hong Kong. It should not be confused with another local dish of the same name, a dessert made out of a superthick, starchy milk-based custard cut into squares or diamonds and then deep-fried in a batter coating in the same way as its probable inspiration, the Portuguese leite frito.

  The second or savory kind of “fried milk” slightly resembles fu yung, at least the very delicate versions that use only egg whites. It, too, could be described as a custard, but a lightly set savory one made with a combination of milk, egg whites, and a little cornstarch, all stir-fried to the texture of scrambled eggs. When I’ve had it in Chinatown restaurants, it usually contains crab or shrimp and sometimes is served on a bed of fried cellophane noodles or rice sticks. Browned pine nuts are the usual garnish.

  This version of fried milk is great as part of a simple Chinese dinner menu. I’ve also found that people who won’t touch egg yolks with a ten-foot pole like it as a breakfast or brunch dish—especially with the vegetarian substitutions suggested below. It’s a useful recipe to know about when you’re wondering what to do with a bunch of egg whites after making something like lemon curd or Hollandaise sauce.

  I first came across the dish in Ken Hom’s fascinating book Fragrant Harbor Taste, a tribute to the food of Hong Kong, and have followed his recipe for many years with only minor deviations. Hom suggests a combination of fresh and canned evaporated milk. I’ve also had good results with all fresh milk. Experiment with the recipe to your liking; it seems to work equally well with larger or smaller proportions of milk, egg white, starch, and seafood or meat.

  YIELD: 5 to 6 servings

  2 tablespoons cornstarch

  1 teaspoon salt

  1½ to 1¾ cups whole milk (all fresh, or about two parts fresh to one part evaporated)

  8 egg whites

  4 ounces lump crabmeat or peeled shrimp (whole if small, otherwise diced)

  2 to 3 ounces unsmoked Smithfield-style ham, coarsely chopped

  A handful of pine nuts

  2 to 3 tablespoons peanut oil

  Cilantro for garnish

  Mix the cornstarch and salt to a smooth paste with a few tablespoons of the milk. Add the remaining milk and egg whites and use a whisk to stir—not whip—the mixture until well combined but not quit
e perfectly blended. Stir in the crabmeat (or shrimp) and ham.

  Toast the pine nuts in a small dry skillet, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned. Scoop them out into a bowl before they can scorch.

  Heat the oil in a wok over medium-high heat. When it is not quite smoking, pour in the milk–egg white mixture and begin to stir-fry, scooping and scrambling with a spatula (preferably a wok spatula). At first it will be thin and soupy; after a couple of minutes you will notice some thickening on the bottom. Reduce the heat to low and continue to stir-fry for a few minutes longer, until the milk custard has the consistency of scrambled eggs. (Total cooking time is usually about 5 to 6 minutes.) Toward the end it will take on a cheesy consistency and “break,” giving up a lot of liquid. Now pour the contents of the wok into a mesh strainer set over a bowl to let the watery part drain off before turning the “fried milk” out into a serving dish. Serve at once, garnished with the toasted pine nuts and a handful of cilantro leaves.

  VARIATIONS: You can replace the shellfish and ham with a few ounces of cooked chicken breast, diced or shredded. For a vegetarian version, eliminate the shellfish and ham and substitute a dozen or so dried shiitake mushrooms (soaked in hot water, drained, and coarsely chopped) along with a large handful of scallions or Chinese chives (trimmed and coarsely chopped), slender asparagus tips (blanched or briefly stir-fried), or seeded chopped tomatoes.

  RICE PUDDING

  Rice puddings exist around the globe in boiled, baked, steamed, and other forms that range from nursery to banquet fare (say, from German Milchreis to French riz à l’impératrice). We in the West are most familiar with puddings based on whole rice, such as Spanish or Latin American arroz con leche, Norwegian riskrem, and the eggy kind at American delicatessen counters. But where rice puddings reach even greater glory, from Turkey to India, they are often made with rice flour. This is entirely understandable, since the essence of rice pudding is the alchemy that takes place between the sweetened milk and the starchy or floury part of the rice grain. (The same is true in parts of Southeast Asia where the “milk” in question is coconut milk.)