The Daily: 23 October 23

A Happy Mistake

This weekend I discovered that if you accidentally pick up a quart of buttermilk and use that to make yogurt, you get a delicious cottage cheese and lots of whey.

The funny thing about this mistake is that the kid at the check-out spent a long time trying to figure out how to ring up the quart. He kept muttering “buttermilk” repeatedly. I thought this was odd, but since I was tired, having spent most of the day in the garden, I didn’t pay much attention. In fact, I put it away when I got home and still didn’t notice. It wasn’t until this morning when I looked for my quart of cream that I found buttermilk instead and realized my mistake. I plowed on with the yogurt making process anyway, thinking that the richness of the buttermilk would be approximately what I needed in fat content to turn milk into yogurt.

Well, the fats are sufficient, but the buttermilk curdles the whole thing.

I quickly corrected course. I went ahead and heated the milk mixture at about 200°F for the full twenty minutes to remove any unwanted critters in the milk, but I stirred minimally, allowing the curds to form. I set up a quick-and-dirty filter to remove the whey, consisting of a large colander set in a bowl and lined with a wet basket-weave towel. (The wet matters for reasons I don’t understand… probably just because water makes everything flow better.) When the twenty minutes were up, I cooled the curds and whey for a little bit, bringing the temperature down to 150°F, not the full cool to yogurt-critter temperature. I figured, rightly it turned out, that running the curds and whey through the sieve would cool it further, and I needed the curds to stay at yogurt temperature, about 115°F.

I set the whey aside for other uses and transferred the towel-full of curds into a bowl. Then I gently mixed in the yogurt starter saved from last week’s batch. It made for a creamy cottage cheese texture, but with more flavor, yogurt flavor. I then put this stuff into the usual jar and set it near the oven to ferment for 6 hours, wrapped in towels. It makes much less yogurt-cheese but it’s much richer, so I don’t have to use that much in the morning oatmeal.

I hope to repeat this mistake…

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After making the yogurt-cheese, I had over 8 cups of whey to use or freeze. I decided to use it. I had been roasting butternut squash with the intent of freezing it and maybe using a bit as a base for a spiced butternut soup. I made squash silk, instead.

I cut up the usual mirepoix and softened the vegetables in olive oil. (This consisted of 8 small carrots, 6 smallish stalks of celery, 2 red onions, and 4 Big Jim chiles, all with the parts I don’t like removed and chopped fine.) Then I added the whey and let it simmer for a while until everything smelled good.

When all the veg was soft and the onions were translucent, I added approximately 6 cups of the roasted squash — which left me with 6 more cups to freeze. Butternut squash is so food-dense, I got 12 cups from three modest-sized squashes. I’ll have dinner for the week, and I can bake about 12 loaves of bread out the stuff in the freezer. Or I can make more soup later.

I added a couple quarts of veg stock and the remainder the buttermilk, since the yogurt recipe only needs a pint of cream. (I usually stretch the cream over two batches of yogurt.) I also added cumin, turmeric, allspice, thyme, grey salt and chipotle powder. I use liberal amounts of spice and very little salt. If you try this happy mistake, start with a half teaspoon or so of each thing and add more until you get to a flavor you like. Then write that amount down so you don’t have to repeat the teaspoon exercise — you can just dump in the amount you like.

I used my immersion blender to purée the whole thing, while bringing the soup to a gentle boil. I did not let it boil for more than a few seconds before turning down the heat to low. I didn’t want more curds. I wanted a thick, silky-smooth texture, about like heavy cream.

Then I set it to simmer on low for a while to make sure all the flavors were blended (and all the unnecessary critters were removed…).

It was delicious!

While this was going on, I also made my hummus with a similar spice mix, dropping the allspice and adding coriander. I also put a whole small bulb of garlic in the hummus and used squeezed lemon for the acid.

To finish up the week’s dinner menu, I made focaccia, substituting sourdough starter for half of the flour and water in my usual focaccia recipe (which usually uses 4 cups flour, 2 cups water, 2 Tbs each olive oil and active dry yeast and no salt in the dough) and then adding another cup of flour. Instead of my usual rosemary, I used winter savory because I wanted a more thyme-y flavor to echo the soup, but not thyme itself. This was just pure improv, but it turned out wonderful.

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A few days ago it was raining on the way home, only this time there were breaks in the clouds to let the setting sun shine through. I was following a double rainbow for several miles. But on one stretch of highway it looked like I was passing in between the two arches — driving through the double rainbow! Probably not the safest driving, what with my phone perched on the steering wheel. But as I’ve never seen this in over half a century of living, I figured it was worth the shot. And I wasn’t the only one driving slow and ogling the color. One guy had his arm out the window. I wonder how that photo turned out!

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©Elizabeth Anker 2023