Milk (30 page)

Heating and cooling: Pour the milk into a heavy saucepan and gradually heat it to or just below boiling. Let it partly cool until not quite hot to the touch, about 110° to 115°F. (You can speed the process by immersing the pan in a sinkful of cold water.)

Inoculating: Put the yogurt into a small bowl; it’s your “starter.” When the milk reaches the right temperature, stir about 1 cup of it into the yogurt, then stir the mixture back into the pot of milk.

Incubating: Gently pour the milk into your chosen container (see
this page
). To repeat the crucial mantra:
It must not be disturbed by any jiggling or shaking,
so set it far from any bumptious goings-on in the household. Let it stand until set to the consistency of a delicate custard, not a heavy pudding. Timings vary widely, but usually yogurt will be well set after 4 to 6 hours if the temperature can be steadily maintained at about 110°F. (Nothing can stop it from taking its own time, so be patient.)

Draining: As explained above, draining the whey once the delicate gel is set makes all the difference between unremarkable and really beautiful yogurt. Line a colander or mesh strainer with
tight-woven
cheesecloth, butter muslin, or a large cotton handkerchief. Set it over a pot or bowl deep enough to hold up to two cups of whey per original quart of milk. Pour or scrape the yogurt into the colander and drain until it has lost close to half its volume in whey, usually about 3 to 4 hours. Turn out the drained yogurt into a large bowl, and stir or beat it as smooth as possible with a stout wooden spoon. It is now ready to eat, and will never taste better.

The yogurt will keep its incomparable freshness for a day or so if refrigerated in a sealed container. After that it will start to take on the still good but less magical flavor of sour yogurt.

If you want to keep a batch going more or less permanently, save a few tablespoons from the last batch and use it as starter for the next. It will most reliably keep up its activity if you use it within a week (preferably less) of making.

VARIATION:
Goats’-milk
yogurt can be made by exactly the same method using a quart of goats’ milk (nonultrapasteurized) to two tablespoons of starter. But the
casein in goats’ milk has a different composition from that in cows’ milk. (Four major forms of casein play a part in the uses of milk, and each has a different configuration in the milk of different species.) As a result, yogurt from goats’ milk will remain liquid. Some books suggest correctives ranging from rennet to kosher gelatin. In fact, it needs no corrective. It is just as good for drinking as other yogurt is for eating.

SERVING SUGGESTIONS:
Whether you prefer sweetened or unsweetened yogurt, starting with the best plain kind you can make (or for that matter, buy) will open up a whole world of flavor possibilities. For instance, any preferred sort of honey put on creamy plain yogurt creates an exquisite contrast of tastes not to be matched by any presweetened commercial version. The same is true of fruit preserves, or flavorful unrefined sugars such as Indian
gur,
or jaggery. Real “sweet” yogurt on fresh berries or fruit is also a revelation. Or pass a bowl of it (perhaps seasoned with fresh mint, dill, or cilantro) to accompany just about any meal based on east-of-the Adriatic traditions—Serbian, Greek, Middle Eastern, or Indian. And don’t forget its uses with
garlic
. There is no more marvelously adaptable culinary chameleon.

W
hat is usually called yogurt cheese is no more cheese than cultured buttermilk is buttermilk. True, there are commercial cheeses (leaning toward the mild, rubbery, and forgettable) based at least partly on yogurt. But most often the term “yogurt cheese” refers to yogurt taken a stage or two beyond the
draining suggested in the main yogurt recipe. Usually it has had enough of the whey drained from it to produce something about as firm as a medium-soft cocktail spread. This is what’s often called
labneh,
or
lebne,
by Arabic-speakers. Sometimes you can buy it under that name in Middle Eastern groceries (but don’t confuse it with
laban,
which is yogurt generally).

It’s hard to give precise directions for turning yogurt into yogurt cheese, since different batches will take a longer or shorter time to drain to a given consistency. But for drained yogurt thick enough to use as a spread or fairly full-bodied dip, I would put either homemade or store-bought yogurt in a cheesecloth-lined colander (nonreactive, please) or the clever mesh-lined
draining device called a “yogurt cheese funnel,” set it over a deep bowl, and let it drain until dripping has completely or almost stopped. If it is still rather messy, gather and tie the cheesecloth corners into a bag that can be hung from a stick (I use a long-handled wooden spoon set over a pail), or put a small plastic-wrapped weight (e.g., a can of beans) on the funnel, and leave until you see no further dripping and the yogurt is the consistency of a dip or spread. The whole process may take anywhere from 6 to 24 hours—sorry, but that’s the nature of the beast. It will happen faster at room temperature than in the refrigerator.

For yogurt cheese balls, you must get the mass to give up still more moisture. In the hot, dry climates where yogurt originated, this is not difficult. In many American kitchens, it will be easier said than done. I suggest that you follow the procedure for yogurt cheese, but first mix the yogurt with a little salt (about ½ teaspoon per starting pint of yogurt), to facilitate drainage. Let it sit still longer, until it resembles a very thick spread. Scrape it into a wide, shallow container (or more than one) like a Pyrex pie plate or baking dish, spreading it out no more than about ⅓ inch thick. If you are blessed with hot, dry summers and blazing sunshine, set it in a sunny place (loosely protected with thin cheesecloth) for 6 to 10 hours, or until it is as thick as cream cheese and the surface is dry. Otherwise, put it in a warm, dry room and wait for the same result, which may take two or three days. Be patient; it will be most satisfyingly cheesy if you wait until the yogurt is no longer tacky to the touch and you see a few dried-out cracks on the surface.

Now lightly rub your palms and a plate with olive oil. Scoop up the yogurt a small handful at a time and roll it into balls about 1 to 1¼ inches in diameter. Set them on the oiled plate as they are done; re-oil your hands as necessary. You should get about 5 to 6 cheese balls per original starting pint of yogurt.

If everything is terribly sticky when you are done, briefly refrigerate the plate before carefully transferring the cheese balls to a screw-top glass jar and pouring in enough olive oil to cover them. They will keep in the refrigerator for two to three weeks. The oil will congeal around them, so be sure to let the jar sit at room temperature long enough to liquefy the oil before scooping out as many cheese balls as you need. Mixed with a little of the oil, they make a lovely spread for crackers or good pita bread with a dusting of black pepper, oregano, or thyme; the sumac-thyme-sesame mixture called
za’atar;
or Turkish hot red pepper flakes (Aleppo, Maraş, or Urfa pepper).

T
his splendid Bulgarian soup is closely related to a Turkish nut sauce of the same name. It is perfectly designed to exploit yogurt’s affinities with garlic, walnuts, and cucumbers. My recipe is loosely based on one in
Maria Kaneva-Johnson’s invaluable
The Melting Pot: Balkan Food and Cookery,
an extraordinary survey of the many interwoven strands that make up the Balkan cuisines.

In the Balkans, cold soups like this are often served with a little ice floating in the bowl. Dill is the usual herb for
tarator,
but some cooks use fresh mint instead. The yogurt should be fresh and sweet, not sharply acidic. Look for a nutty-flavored walnut oil; some health-food brands are so tasteless that olive oil is preferable. I like the French-made J. Leblanc.

For all yogurt-cucumber combinations I suggest using the small, thin-skinned cucumbers often sold here as “Persian-type,” which are increasingly available even in supermarkets. When chopped or grated they release less water than the large, usually waxed American ones, and add better cucumber flavor. If you’re stuck with the big, coarse kind, you can slightly improve results by first peeling and seeding them, then grating them, sprinkling lightly with salt, and letting some of the liquid drain off before mixing them with the other ingredients. Follow this procedure in any recipe using grated or chopped cucumbers.

YIELD:
4 to 5 servings (about 4 cups)

Pound the garlic and salt to a paste with a mortar and pestle. Set aside a handful of walnut meats; pound the rest smooth with the garlic. Add the bread and pound the mixture to a paste. Work in 2 to 3 tablespoons of the oil.

Whisk the yogurt in a mixing bowl with the walnut-bread paste. Whisk to combine. Coarsely grate the cucumbers or dice them very fine and add to the yogurt. (If using a hothouse cucumber, peel and seed it first.) Stir in the lemon juice.

Let the soup chill for at least an hour in the refrigerator. It will thin slightly as the cucumbers release their juice. Meanwhile, chop the remaining walnuts fine. At serving time, stir in enough ice water to make it the consistency of a thick soup. Taste for salt and add a bit more if you like. Put an ice cube or a little cracked ice in each bowl. Serve garnished with plenty of fresh dill; pass the lemon wedges, chopped walnuts, and the remaining 2 to 3 tablespoons of walnut oil for everyone to add to taste.

T
he best sauce may be hunger, but some combination of garlic and yogurt runs a close second from Serbia to the western Himalayas. It appears on local tables as universally as simple tomato salsas in Mexico and is put on all kinds of meats and vegetables—though in many regions, not on fish or seafood; there are widespread taboos against combining fish and dairy products.

YIELD:
1 cup

Pound the garlic and salt to a paste using a mortar and pestle; stir in the yogurt. Serve at once for the mildest flavor, or let it sit in the refrigerator for several hours to bring out the garlic.

VARIATION:
The recipe for “Mast-o Mooseer” in
Margaret Shaida’s
The Legendary Cuisine of Persia
is an interesting spin on the yogurt-garlic idea calling for 8 peeled and chopped shallots (reduce or halve this if the shallots are large) to 1 cup yogurt. Soak the shallots in cold water for several hours (overnight if they’re strong) and let dry thoroughly before seasoning with salt and pepper and mixing into the yogurt.

A
ll cuisines of the
Diverse Sources Belt—or original Yogurtistan—have their versions of yogurt combined with fresh vegetables and herbs. In English such preparations are variously and lamely described as salads, soups, relishes, dips, spreads, cold side dishes, or sauces, though none of these exactly fits the bill. Perhaps the best-known of them is the cucumber-yogurt mixture called
cacık
(pronounced “jajik”) in Turkish and
tzatziki
in
Greek; other names include
khyar bi laban
(Arabic) and
mast-o khiar
(Farsi). Any ten different people probably will give you fifteen ideas on how to concoct it—say, with thick sweet yogurt to make it mild and dense, ice water to make it soupy, lemon juice to make it sour, oil to make it satiny, chopped cucumbers presalted to draw off moisture, or grated cucumbers allowed to contribute all the moisture they want. There is invariably some kind of herb, but whether it is parsley, dill, scallion, cilantro, fennel, dried mint, fresh mint, several combined, or none of the above depends on whom you’re talking to. Cucumbers, yogurt, salt, and garlic are about the only constants (and even the last can be omitted).

The following is the version I like best, but don’t hesitate to try any of the embellishments I have mentioned. There is no right or wrong way to make it. I will say, however, that the quality of the cucumbers and the yogurt you start with will come through very distinctly. If you have just made a particularly excellent batch of your own yogurt, there is no finer purpose you could devote it to.

If you have to use the thick-skinned American-type cucumbers, see the suggestion on
this page
.

YIELD:
About 3 cups

Peel and seed the cucumbers; cut into very fine dice and put them in a small bowl with ½ teaspoon of the salt. Let stand for about 20 minutes, or until they
have given up some of their juice. Drain them and squeeze as dry as you can in a few thicknesses of paper towels.

Crush the garlic and remaining salt to a paste with a mortar and pestle. Thoroughly mix the
cucumbers with the garlic paste,
yogurt, dried mint, and pepper. Taste for salt (probably it will have plenty). Beat in the olive oil, and let sit for at least an hour to meld the flavors; serve at room temperature as a dip, relish, or just generally useful dish.