As someone who never really found the joy in cooking, I am always pleasantly surprised when my kitchen endeavors turn out as they're supposed to. This culinary trepidation is related in part to the incredible trauma that ensued when a high school friend and I decided to essay making kulich one year. Kulich is an ambitious multi-stage undertaking that probably shouldn't be entrusted to by kids who are easily distracted by, if memory serves, mocking Kevin Costner's accent in "Robin Hood: Prince of Cheese." Then, too, for reasons largely outside our control, namely that the local firebug set alight the woods behind her house just as we started the first kneading, we got sticky yellow dough all over the place as well as the phone when we dialed up the guys in big red trucks. (Imagine the thrill of said friend's mother, who had overcome her doubts about leaving us alone with this ambitious baking project, on returning home to find the firemen deploying hoses toward her back yard, a thin pall of smoke over the block, and her neighbors standing on the street staring toward her home. Thank God for the person who caught her by the shoulders as she barreled toward us, shook her firmly, and said, "Elaine. ELAINE. It wasn't. Your. Kids. And everyone's okay.")
Anyway, once in a great while I find a recipe that calls out to me in its simplicity and promise of tasty result, and if it involves the lazy chef's friend, the slow cooker, well, sign me up. So finding out that you can make yogurt in a crockpot with a minimum of skill sounded just the ticket. The local farmers market has a new vendor, Clear Spring Creamery, that carries whole unhomogenized milk. It was fate.
The tendency of people to talk to one another at farmers markets, in defiance of the modern rule that we politely ignore one another, is a mixed blessing, but this time I'm grateful for it, because the guy next to me mentioned that his family makes yogurt at home and that you can just put the stuff in the oven with a light on, even if you're not using a gas oven. Hm. That offered a lower potential for disaster than the original instruction to wrap the crockpot in towels, so I tried it.
Half a gallon of milk, some Chobani plain yogurt as a starter, into the oven with the lot, and lo, when I crawled out of bed today, ecce marvolo! A giant crock of tangy-smelling...stuff! I drizzled honey onto some of it for breakfast. Wow. No wonder some people enjoy this cooking business.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
Congrats on your achievement. I made a cheesecake for the first time, for the Easter dinner yesterday, but that was just mixin' and bakin'. Not quite the magic that you made happen.
And I'm all the more pleased that maybe that was some illegal milk that you got hold of.
Pssh, the biotes did all the hard work. (And the milk was 100% legal; it's pasteurized, just not homogenized. To get the raw stuff, you've got to know all sorts of gang signs and passwords. Too much work.)
i also like to occasionally make my own butter because it's so easy. it's not particularly inexpensive, but there's something squee about making butter, that just feels so LHOTP but with black people. and then i make it into a compound butter and put it on sunday's biscuits. forget about it. IE
I had homemade butter with my crumpets of fail this weekend; it's not so LHOTP when there's a Cuisinart involved, but it's no less delicious (drink!). According to Clear Spring's website, they use Jersey cows, which yield even MORE butterfat yumminess. Heaven only knows what would happen if you took the next step and used it for the compound butter and biscuits.
Man, the drool is shorting out my keyboard something fierce.
gotta love fUdPrOn.
Post a Comment