Milk

by Anne Mendelson

  YIELD: 12 or more servings (about 2 pounds)

  2 pounds dry, compact farmer cheese or pot cheese, preferably Russian tvorog (do not use cottage cheese)

  ½ pound unsalted butter

  1 cup sugar

  4 egg yolks, from very fresh and, if possible, free-range eggs

  1 cup heavy cream

  1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

  Currants, raisins, sliced almonds, or bits of different-colored candied fruit for decoration

  Have ready a clean terra-cotta or other ceramic flowerpot of about 2½- to 3-quart capacity, with a hole in the bottom for draining. Also assemble a length of tight-woven cheesecloth, butter muslin, or other clean cotton cloth large enough to line the pot with some overhang; a rack and a deep plate to stand the pot on; and a means of weighting the cheese such as a small plate with a couple of heavy cans or large beach pebbles placed on it.

  With a large wooden spoon or a pusher of the type French cooks call a champignon, force the cheese a little at a time through a fine-mesh strainer set over a deep bowl. Work it as smooth as possible with a large spoon.

  Using a wooden spoon, cream the butter in a large mixing bowl. Beat the sugar into the egg yolks in a separate bowl, then work them thoroughly into the butter. Gradually beat the cheese in until it is smoothly incorporated. Work in the cream and vanilla extract.

  Line the flowerpot with the cheesecloth, trying to eliminate wrinkles as much as possible. (The ones that remain will be clearly visible when you unmold the paskha.) Spoon in the cheese mixture, and smooth the top (which later will be the base of the paskha) as level as possible. Fold the edges of the cloth over the top.

  Set the flowerpot on the rack over the larger plate, set the smaller plate and weights on top of the paskha, and put the whole arrangement in the refrigerator to drain for 18 to 24 hours, or until it has stopped dripping.

  Unwrap the edges of the cloth and unmold the paskha by carefully inverting it onto a serving plate. Gently peel away the cheesecloth and use the dried fruit and nuts to spell out the letters “XB” on the side.

  Serve the paskha with kulich (see above). People can either eat it in spoonfuls or spread it on slices of kulich with a knife.

  USES OF WHEY

  First-time cheesemakers are often dismayed to see how much whey (and how little cheese) they end up with at the end of their labors. Their predicament is also that of the cheese industry as a whole. In a few parts of the world, practical uses have been devised for whey—e.g., the curious boiled-down brown substance that Norwegians adore as mysost (“whey cheese”). Or people have learned to recycle the whey in order to make what Italians call ricotta. Farmers used to feed whey to pigs (who love it) in copious amounts. It also has often been a useful aid to home breadmakers, as the liquid in a yeast dough.

  In modern times, resourceful American marketers have succeeded in promoting spray-dried whey powder as a nutritional supplement (my advice is “Save your money”). Schemes to put it through alcoholic fermentation to produce “whey wine” have been around for a long time, and today some visionaries claim to glimpse a bright future for whey as a source of ethanol.

  For home cooks who find themselves awash in whey after making some simple fresh cheese or Indian panir, I suggest looking back to the time—not much more than a century ago—when it was considered a nutritious, cooling drink.

  To me, the most delicious whey for drinking is the soured kind, like that drained from yogurt (this page). “Sweet” (unsoured) whey from various kinds of cheesemaking with little or no culturing of the milk has much blander flavor. But it makes an agreeable enough drink mixed with a good dash of lemon juice and a little sugar and poured over ice cubes. (People with lactose-digestion problems should know that unsoured whey is a concentrated source of lactose.) Still, I prefer it converted into sour whey by simple culturing: Inoculate the whey by stirring in some plain yogurt or buttermilk with active cultures. (The proportions can be flexible, but about ¼ to ⅓ cup of yogurt or buttermilk to 2 quarts of whey is a good rule of thumb. Yogurt works better if the whey is a little warmer than room temperature when you start.) Let it sit at room temperature until it is well soured; as with other forms of cultured milk, the timing will vary a lot. It is delicious poured over ice with a pinch each of salt and crushed dried mint, or a little sugar and lemon juice as for sweet whey.

  BULGUR PILAF WITH WHEY

  If you don’t want to drink whey, another good use is as a cooking stock in cereal-based dishes such as pilafs. If you are going to make a renneted, not very sour cheese or the chhenna/panir in the chapter on Fresh Milk and Cream, build something like this into the menu plans. The whey makes a pleasantly neutral cooking liquid, adding a little more body than plain water without absolutely taking over as a strong meat stock would. (Caution: Whey that is too acid may make the bulgur remain overchewy even with long cooking.)

  Middle Eastern cooks use bulgur in three grades of fineness. Coarse bulgur is the best for pilafs. If you have to settle for the medium grind of most supermarket bulgur, slightly reduce the cooking and resting time.

  YIELD: About 6 servings

  1 ½ cups coarse bulgur

  2 large shallots

  1 garlic clove

  2 to 3 tablespoons butter

  2¼ cups sweet or nearly sweet whey (from making a renneted cheese or panir, this page; do not substitute whey from drained yogurt or a cheese made only by souring)

  1¼ teaspoons salt

  ½ teaspoon Turkish paprika (optional)

  A handful each of parsley and mint leaves

  ¼ cup pine nuts

  Rinse the bulgur under cold running water, and let drain very thoroughly. Meanwhile, mince the shallots with the garlic.

  Melt the butter in a saucepan. When it is fragrant and sizzling, add the shallot-garlic mixture and sauté over moderate heat just until translucent. Add the drained bulgur, and stir to coat the grains well. Cook, stirring, just until very lightly browned, about 3 to 4 minutes. Add the whey, salt, and optional paprika, cover the pan, and cook over low heat until the liquid is almost completely absorbed, about 15 to 20 minutes.

  While the pilaf cooks, mince the parsley and mint together. In a small heavy skillet, toast the pine nuts over medium-low heat, stirring, until they are lightly browned; remove from the heat.

  When the bulgur has absorbed nearly all the whey, put a kitchen towel over the pan, to absorb any condensation, and cover with the lid. Let the pilaf sit, either off the heat or over the lowest possible heat on a heat deflector like a Flame Tamer, for about 7 to 8 minutes. Fluff up the grains and serve at once, garnished with the minced herbs and toasted pine nuts. A little creamy yogurt stirred in at table is a pleasant addition.

  VARIATION: For Barley Pilaf with Whey, replace the bulgur with ¾ cup pearl barley. Use 4 cups whey and 3 to 4 tablespoons butter. Increase the cooking time to 45 to 60 minutes (35 to 40 minutes if you like it extremely chewy). Check toward the end and add more whey or water if the barley is absorbing liquid too fast. Omit the resting and fluffing steps.

  A NOTE ON SHOPPING SOURCES

  I have never found it necessary to invest in specialized equipment for making yogurt, butter, and fresh cheeses. The cultures I use to inoculate milk or cream can easily be obtained from commercial plain yogurt or cultured buttermilk. (The supermarket articles will work just fine as long as they contain live cultures; you may get even better-tasting results using artisanal versions from small local producers at farmers’ markets or specialty shops.)

  My rennet source for cheeses (plain unflavored Junket brand tablets) is also available in some supermarkets and can sometimes be ordered through pharmacies. If you strike out, it is not difficult to contact the manufacturer online: www.junketdesserts.com/.

  The really crucial pieces of equipment—as described in the yogurt, butter, and fresh cheeses chapters—usually have to do with temperature measurement and control, jiggle-proof incubators, and draining arrangements. I’ve always been content
to improvise with inexpensive insulated containers, kitchen colanders, and sturdy tight-woven cheesecloth or cotton handkerchiefs. Still, I’d be delighted if some users of this book were sufficiently bitten by the home dairying bug to try experimenting with specialized bacterial strains and slightly more elaborate equipment. In that case, I recommend the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company (P.O. Box 85, Ashfield, MA 01330), a mail-order source and information center founded and maintained by Ricki Carroll. Send inquiries to info@cheesemaking.com, or telephone 413–628–3808 to request a catalogue.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Among the many people who made this book possible, Judith Jones deserves my greatest thanks for the skill, patience, and insight with which she faced a most eccentric project. Judith’s indefatigable assistant, Ken Schneider, salvaged the entire manuscript from an eleventh-hour computer meltdown. (Up to then my nephew, Jorg F. Bauer, Jr., had managed to nurse an aging iMac through innumerable tragicomedies.) Many additional thanks to Iris Weinstein (who designed the interior of the book), Barbara De Wilde (who created such a delightful jacket), and to everyone else at Knopf.

  Elisabeth Sifton encouraged me in an earlier version of this project and introduced me to the late Walter D. Howard, who put me on the path to understanding something about cows and dairying. Years later, Colman Andrews and Margo True at Saveur brought me back to the subject with a magazine assignment on milk.

  Special thanks to my agent, the one and only Jane Dystel.

  Thanks to many dairy and cheese professionals, including Art Hill, Allison Hooper, Paul Kindstedt, Paula Lambert, Patrick Longo, John Loomis, Max McCalman, the Murray’s Cheese crew (especially Taylor Cocalis), Debra and Eran Wajswol, and Karen Weinberg.

  Equal thanks to some probers of nutrition-and-health questions, including Susan Allport (who read a portion of the manuscript in draft), Nina Planck, David Schleifer, and Nina Teicholz.

  For assistance in historical research I am greatly indebted to the staffs of the American Museum of Natural History Library, the Bergen County (New Jersey) Cooperative Library System, the New-York Historical Society Library, and the New York Public Library (especially Tom Lisanti, Stefan Saks, and the peerless Dave Smith). Jack Hawley, Andrew F. Smith, Joanna Waley-Cohen, and Nach Waxman helped steer me to needed materials.

  More steering came from fellow culinary historians and other dairy-history buffs including Gary Allen, Darra Goldstein, Annie Hauck-Lawson, Lisa Heldke, Ben Katchor, Rachel Laudan, Jan Longone, Sandra L. Oliver, Krishnendu Ray, Laura Shapiro, William Rubel, Robin Weir, and many, many members of the Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS) listserv.

  My very great thanks to many cooks, culinary experts, and assorted colleagues and friends, including Joan Bolker, Cara De Silva, Naomi Duguid, Nicki Kalish, Leslie Land, Zarela Martínez, Lynda Owen, Maricel E. Presilla, Nachammai Raman, and Susan J. Talbutt.

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Culinary works for a general audience can’t accommodate the sort of reference apparatus that one expects in works of scholarship—a drawback, perhaps, in a cookbook that strays as far into polemical territory as this one. Readers interested in finding out more about milk and its history will find paths to further learning in the works listed below. I will be happy to direct people frustrated by the absence of documentation for particular factual claims to specific sources; please write to me at knopfwebmaster@randomhouse.com.

  HISTORICAL, SCIENTIFIC, AND OTHER SPECIALIZED WORKS

  Allport, Susan. The Queen of Fats: Why Omega-3s Were Removed from the Western Diet and What We Can Do to Replace Them. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.

  Atherton, Henry V., and J. A. Newlander. Chemistry and Testing of Dairy Products, 4th edition. Westport, Conn.: AVI Publishing, 1977.

  Aubaile-Sallenave, Françoise. “Al-Kishk: The Past and Present of a Complex Culinary Practice,” in A Taste of Thyme: Culinary Cultures of the Middle East, ed. by Sami Zubaida and Richard Tapper, 2nd edition. London: I. B. Tauris, 2000.

  Banerji, Chitrita. Eating India: An Odyssey into the Food and Culture of the Land of Spices. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2007.

  ———. Land of Milk and Honey: Travels in the History of Indian Food. London: Seagull Books, 2007.

  Behr, Edward. “Elegy for the Taste of Cream: Low Technology and Old Pastures,” in The Art of Eating, 1990, no. 15, pp. 1–8.

  Du Puis, E. Melanie. Nature’s Perfect Food: How Milk Became America’s Drink. New York: New York University Press, 2002.

  Hoffpauir, Robert. “Water Buffalo,” in The Cambridge World History of Food, eds. Kenneth F. Kiple and Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2000; see vol. I, pp. 583–607.

  International Dairy Foods Association. Dairy Facts, 2005 Edition. Washington, D.C.: International Dairy Foods Association, 2005.

  Jensen, Robert G., ed. Handbook of Milk Composition. San Diego: Academic Press, 1995.

  Kindstedt, Paul, with the Vermont Cheese Council. American Farmstead Cheese: The Complete Guide to Making and Selling Artisan Cheeses. White River Junction, Vt.: Chelsea Green, 2005.

  Kosikowski, Frank V., and Vikram V. Mistry. Cheese and Fermented Milk Foods, 3rd edition. 2 vols. Westport, Conn.: F. V. Kosikowski, 1997.

  Kramer, Mark. Three Farms: Making Milk, Meat, and Money from the American Soil. Boston: Little, Brown, 1980.

  Lampard, Eric E. The Rise of the Dairy Industry in Wisconsin: A Study in Agricultural Change. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1963.

  Lampert, Lincoln M. Modern Dairy Products: Composition, Food Value, Processing, Chemistry, Bacteriology, Testing, Imitation Dairy Products, 3rd edition. New York: Chemical Publishing, 1975.

  Lysaght, Patricia, ed. Milk and Milk Products from Medieval to Modern Times. Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Ethnological Food Research. Edinburgh: Canongate Academic, 1994.

  McGee, Harold. On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, 2nd edition. New York: Scribner, 2004.

  Mahias, Marie-Claude. “Milk and Its Transformations in Indian Society.” Food and Foodways, 1988, vol. 2, pp. 265–88.

  Nantet, Bernard, et al. Cheeses of the World. New York: Rizzoli, 1993.

  Park, Young W., and George F. W. Haenlein, eds. Handbook of Milk of Non-Bovine Mammals. Ames, Iowa: Blackwell, 2006.

  Porter, Valerie. Cattle: A Handbook to the Breeds of the World. London: A&C Black/Christopher Helm, 1991.

  ———. Goats of the World. Ipswich, U.K.: Farming Press, 1996.

  Sabban, Françoise. “Un savoir-faire oublié: le travail du lait en Chine ancienne.” Zinbun: Memoirs of the Research Institute for Humanistic Studies, Kyoto University, 1986, vol. 21, pp. 31–65.

  Selitzer, Ralph. The Dairy Industry in America. New York: Dairy & Ice Cream Field and Books for Industry, 1976.

  Simoons, Frederick J. Food in China: A Cultural and Historical Inquiry. Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press, 1991.

  Smith, Bruce D. The Emergence of Agriculture. New York: Scientific American Library, 1995.

  Trout, G. Malcolm. Homogenized Milk: A Review and Guide. East Lansing: Michigan State College Press, 1950.

  Tyler, Howard D., and M. E. Ensminger. Dairy Cattle Science, 4th edition. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2006.

  Walker, Harlan, ed. Milk: Beyond the Dairy. Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 1999. Totnes, U.K.: Prospect Books, 2000.

  Wilson, C. Anne. Food and Drink in Britain: From the Stone Age to Recent Times. New York: Harper & Row/Barnes & Noble, 1974.

  Wong, Noble P., ed. Fundamentals of Dairy Chemistry, 3rd edition. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1988.

  Wright, Russell O. Life and Death in the United States: Statistics on Life Expectancies, Diseases and Death Rates for the Twentieth Century. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1997.

  COOKBOOKS

  Acton, Eliza. Modern Cookery for Private Families. Non-facsimile reissue of 1855 edition. Lewes, U.K.: Southover Press, 1993.


  Batra, Neelam. 1,000 Indian Recipes. New York: Wiley, 2002.

  Carroll, Ricki. Home Cheesemaking: Recipes for 75 Homemade Cheeses, 3rd edition. North Adams, Mass.: Storey Books, 2002.

  David, Elizabeth. French Provincial Cooking. Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin Books, 1969.

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  Fried, Barbara R. The Berry Cookbook. New York: Collier Books, 1962.

  Goldstein, Darra. A Taste of Russia: A Cookbook of Russian Hospitality. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991.

  Hazelton, Nika Standen. The Continental Flavor: A Cookbook. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961.

  Hom, Ken. Fragrant Harbor Taste: The New Chinese Cooking of Hong Kong. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989.

  Jaffrey, Madhur. An Invitation to Indian Cooking. New York: Random House/Vintage Books, 1975.

  ———. Madhur Jaffrey’s World-of-the-East Vegetarian Cooking. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981.

  ———. Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian. New York: Clarkson Potter, 1999.

  Jones, Evan. The World of Cheese. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976.

  Jones, Judith, and Evan Jones. The Book of New New England Cookery. Hanover, N. H.: University Press of New England, 2001.

  Kachru, Purnima. Kashmiri Kitchen. New Delhi: Roli Books/Lustre Press, 2000.

  Kaneva-Johnson, Maria. The Melting Pot: Balkan Food and Cookery. Totnes, U.K.: Prospect Books, 1995.

  Kaufman, Edna. Melting Pot of Mennonite Cookery, 1874–1974, 3rd edition. North Newton, Kans.: Bethel College Women’s Association, 1975.

  Kochilas, Diane. The Glorious Foods of Greece: Traditional Recipes from the Islands, Cities, and Villages. New York: William Morrow, 2001.