On Jan 5, 2007, at 21:20, Linda Mitchell wrote:
And I love buttermilk - preferably with some salt in it! The only problem is that what I can get is "cultured", not churned. That means they put something in the cream to make the butter separate out.
Are you certain-sure? I always understood "cultured" to mean, simply, that the -- unpasteurized -- milk had "stood" for a while, exposed to bacteria (culture).
Real churned buttermilk is what's left over when the cream is mechanically agitated to make the butter "gather".
Yep. At 5-8 yrs old, I spent a lot of time at my uncle's farm feeling very prviledged to be permitted to "help out" and, often, putting in as much as 6-8hrs of work in the process. My cousin, 4yrs my senior, thought I was nuts and a sucker for punishment. But *his* parents always pushed him to do the chores (and never mind the books), while mine always pushed me in the opposite direction.
I was pretty lousy at milking (my fingers not being strong enough to squeeze and pull the cows' teats properly) but even my aunt allowed as how I had a light hand at skimming the first cream off the milk. Which was after the 12hrs the milk took to "settle" (ie the butter-cream floated to the top). At that point, the cream was still "sweet"; it produced butter when churned, and left behind only slightly sour buttermilk. By the second skimming (another 12 hrs), the cream had far less fat and was sourer. You could still make butter from it, but it took a long time and was hardly worth the trouble (we're talking of hand-operated churns) -- much better to sell it as "thin" or "light" cream (called sour cream in US).
If you left the milk in its tray, after the second skimming, for another 24 hrs, it would begin to clabber and turn sour (not bitter, the way pasteurized milk does). You could then make pot cheese from it (by heating, slowly, till the whey separated from the curds) or you could "eat" it, with a spoon (very soft curds. Yummy with new, buttered and "dilled" potatoes). Or you could "scramble" it -- break down the forming curds, with a whisk, till it had the consistency of American buttermilk -- and drink/slurp it. It was sour, it didn't make me run to the toilet the way cream, butter and sweet, "full-fat" (once skimmed) milk did, and I loved it. Confirming, for my Mother, the sad fact that I was a "shiksa"; a peasant through and through... 'cause only peasants drank "that stuff" (rather than throw it away, when they let it sit too long and didn't have enough to make pot cheese. Which, without adding some "full-fat" milk, would have been "poor man's pot cheese" anyway).
It was funny to realize, once I was in my twenties, that my milk/milk-fat intolerance had, likely, come to me through my Mother. As an adult, she never drank milk, because she said she "didn't like it" (I hate sweet milk myself and just the smell of the "fresh" milk is likely to make me gag. American pasteurized doesn't do that). And, as a child, she never drank enough of it to give her the runs -- she grew up in a city (no access to cows) and too poor to buy the "full-fat" sweet milk.
Another "funny" is that, unlike Linda, I hate buttermilk with salt in it -- which is the only option (plus a host of "plastic chemicals") one gets in the stores around Lexington -- so I don't get to drink it much here even though it's easily available (unlike in Poland). At least we do have the option of buying sweet (unsalted) butter; I hate salted butter even more than salted buttermilk (or salted tomato juice) :)
I know we have a Dutch woman on our list, so I'd like to ask a question...
Agnes, what's "kernemelek" (not sure of the spelling, but that's what it sounded like, 35yrs ago)? It was *the best* "sour milk" drink I've ever had; not quite as sour as Polish, but sour enough so I could drink it without paying for the pleasure with hours spent on the toilet -- the best of both worlds... Is it a Dutch version of buttermilk ("churn milk", maybe?)? Or something else?
-- Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/ Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland) To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
