Milk (39 page)

S
our cream, crème fraîche, Russian
smetana, Latin American
crema, and the rest of the family can effortlessly be turned into cold sauces and
dressings perfect for a hundred purposes. The story is different as regards hot sauces, because of the ease with which heated sour cream curdles. The richest versions of crème fraîche (unfortunately, different brands vary)
are more heat-resistant, as is crema. But in most cases coldness itself is part of what’s delightful in their pairings with other foods, hot or cold.

The parade of marvelous table sauces or dressings begins with plain sour cream itself, simply mixed smooth or given a brief draining as with yogurt. (Draining is helpful if it is to be combined with anything a little watery.) It responds happily to minimal additions like salt, lemon juice or wine vinegar, and/or sugar, with or without some enriching egg yolk. One basic formula for a savory sour cream sauce—you can omit anything except the sour cream—would be an egg yolk whisked smooth in a small bowl and combined with a large pinch of salt, 1 cup sour cream, ¼ to 2 teaspoons sugar, 1 to 2 teaspoons grated onion, and 1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon lemon juice or vinegar. Whisk in the sugar and acid a tiny bit at a time until you like the balance of flavors.

Many other seasonings can be used with or instead of these. Dill, fresh or dried, is the classic herb, but minced chives or scallions are also popular. Caraway seed has the same affinity for sour cream as cumin for yogurt. Other wonderful additions include grated apple, minced sour pickles of all sorts, and strong-flavored accents like prepared horseradish or mustard, Tabasco or chipotle sauce, cayenne, curry powder, capers, and anchovies. Chopped hard-boiled egg is a natural. If you can find the Balkan sweet red pepper and eggplant sauce called
ajvar,
mix it with sour cream in any proportion to make a pretty and delicious relish (or spread for rye toast).

The foods that such sauces go with are numberless. In the Ashkenazic
Jewish kitchen, a bowl of plain or (less often) flavored sour cream regularly accompanies blintzes, potato pancakes, and—a truly lovely marriage—pot cheese or farmer cheese. (Whenever possible, try to look for the best of all sour-cream versions, smetana, in Russian stores.) It is nearly mandatory with Russian blini, and I prefer it to syrup on most kinds of pancakes or fritters. Everyone knows that sour cream goes perfectly with hot baked potatoes, but it’s just as good with boiled potatoes (dill is great here), braised red cabbage, or braised sauerkraut. It’s among the best of all salad-dressing bases; try sour cream instead of mayonnaise in potato or egg salad as well as cole slaw. Mix it with sliced or chopped cucumbers or radishes (especially black radishes). Combined with
cured herring, sardines, or smoked chub or whitefish, it magically cuts their fishiness. And please follow
Mimi Sheraton’s suggestion (in
From My Mother’s Kitchen
) of mixing chunks of pumpernickel or rye bread into a bowl of sour
cream.

When it comes to sour cream or crème fraîche as dessert sauce, all I can say is the plainer, the better. Most seasonings except for maybe—
maybe—
a touch of lemon juice, sugar, and/or ground cinnamon or allspice are just so much lily gilding. All by itself it’s the ideal dressing for mixed fruit salads (leave out the pineapple unless it’s cooked or canned) and a heavenly foil for blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, and sliced peaches or nectarines. Put some on a dried-fruit compote. Or make an instant and excellent pseudo-mousse by mixing it into cooked-down fruit pastes like apple butter and prune or apricot lekvar.

A final use invented by the late
Helen Evans Brown and immensely popular for a couple of generations: For the world’s simplest chocolate frosting, melt 5 ounces of semisweet chocolate in the top of a double boiler and stir in ½ cup sour cream.

S
orry if hopeful cooks coming on something called “Buttermilk Dressing” expect a cousin of Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing. Mine was designed with potato salad in mind, though I expect it would also be good with coleslaw.

YIELD:
About 1 cup

Whisk together the oil and all other dressing ingredients. To use for potato salad, toss with the freshly cooked potatoes while they are still warm. Scatter the salad with minced scallions, snipped dill, and (if desired) some chopped walnuts.

I
f you are fond of cold yogurt sauces or sauce-salad-relishes like Turkish Cacık or Indian Raitas (
this page
and
this page
), probably you will enjoy this sour-cream counterpart. One of my longtime favorites is this fresh, summery version in
The Book of
New
New England Cookery
by Judith and
Evan
Jones. I generally use one of the small thin-skinned Persian-type cucumbers and—because I like the sharp flavor of black radishes—substitute a chunk for one of the red radishes. This is especially luscious if you use
Homemade Sour Cream
.

YIELD:
Makes about 1½ cups

After you have grated the cucumber and radishes, squeeze them dry in a towel. Then mix all of the ingredients together, salting to taste. Refrigerate for an hour or so before serving.

O
ne of my favorite historically oriented international cookbooks is
The Melting Pot of Mennonite Cookery 1874–1974
by
Edna Ramseyer Kaufman, happily back in print after a hiatus. It traces the wanderings of the Mennonites from the Low Countries and Switzerland to parts of the old Prussian, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian empires and eventually the New World. It’s remarkable to see the cooking traditions that survived the many journeys of this sect, some of whom were among my family’s oldest neighbors in Pennsylvania.

The book contains no fewer than three versions—from three separate parts of the Mennonite diaspora—of a “salad” that must stem from a very ancient shared tradition. It takes some explaining to people who have never seen this kind of peasant dish: You first soured fresh milk by letting it stand, then added freshly torn or cut lettuce and sliced or chopped hard-boiled eggs to it. (There were versions with homemade noodles or cucumber and scallions.) The resulting soup-salad was seasoned with salt and eaten very cold, sometimes with a little sugar and vinegar. A bit of sour cream might enrich the sour milk. It was a summer dish, considered extremely refreshing and healthful in hot weather.

I tried it for myself one hot July when I had some freshly made cultured buttermilk and sour cream on hand. It was indeed beautifully restorative. You won’t, however, get the same delicate freshness with commercial buttermilk and sour cream. Made with the homemade articles, it gives you one of those startling glimpses into the past achievable by nothing except firsthand tasting.

Have everything well chilled and mix only at the last minute. The amounts per person are about 1 cup
Homemade Cultured Buttermilk
stirred smooth with ¼ teaspoon salt (or to taste) and a few spoonfuls of
Homemade Sour Cream
; a dash of cider vinegar and/or sugar, if desired; 1 sliced hard-boiled egg; and a large handful of tender lettuce (Boston, Bibb, or any young leaf lettuce), torn into bite-sized pieces. Eat it from a soup bowl.

B
eef Stroganoff, named for a family of long pedigree in czarist Russia, was a reigning party favorite a generation ago and is one of my leading nominees for a return from limbo. The dish started being extolled in the 1930s by members of the self-styled “gourmet” movement in the United States. Its distinguishing features are thin strips of rapidly seared beef, a sauce enriched with sour cream, and an otherwise complete absence of agreement on the necessary ingredients.

It takes a lot for any beef Stroganoff to be certifiably “inauthentic,” though I’d probably draw the line at the addition of habanero salsas or
herbes de Provence.
Most recipes have onions and mushrooms, but there are cooks who reject either or both. One extremely lofty recipe has you fry some onions in the pan “for flavor,” then throw them out lest they mar the noble simplicity of the beef. The amount of sour cream (a few atypical recipes have sweet cream) can be half a tanker or a few tablespoons. I have seen Stroganoffs from several continents with or without tomato paste, catsup, condensed mushroom soup, tarragon vinegar (not a bad idea, that), Tabasco, cayenne, paprika, wine marinades, flambéed brandy, sugar, Madeira, and moose meat (this last in a marvelous book titled
Cooking Alaskan
).

All I can say about the following version is that I like it. If that much filet mignon or sirloin is a financial impossibility, try thin-sliced flank steak for a chewier but still excellent result. The classic accompaniment is noodles or a rice pilaf; some people sauté the mushrooms separately and serve them as a garnish or side dish.

YIELD:
6 to 7 servings

Cut the meat into strips about 2 to 3 inches long and ⅓ to ½ inch thick. This is easier if you first put it in the freezer for about 30 minutes. Put the strips, well separated, on plates or a work surface and dredge with flour, turning them to coat lightly on all sides. Chop the onion fairly fine and cut the mushrooms, stem and all, into thin lengthwise slices.

Heat half the butter over high heat in a large heavy (preferably cast-iron) skillet. When it is sizzling and fragrant, reduce the heat to medium-high, add a few strips of meat at a time, and brown them very quickly on both sides, stirring with a wooden spoon. As each batch is done, remove it to a plate and add a few more strips. From time to time add a little more of the butter to moisten the pan. The trick is not to crowd the pan (which makes the meat stew in its own juice) and to brown the meat rapidly without letting the flour scorch; keep adjusting the heat as necessary.

When all the meat is browned, sauté the onion in the same pan over medium heat, stirring, until translucent and lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Add the mushrooms and cook, tossing and stirring, until they begin to release their juice, another 5 minutes or so. Raise the heat to high and cook until the liquid is nearly evaporated. Stir in the broth and mustard; cook, stirring, over medium heat until the sauce is a little thickened, about 5 to 7 minutes. Add the browned meat with any juices and cook, stirring and tossing, until it is heated through, 2 to 3 minutes. Now reduce the heat to very low and stir in the sour cream. It will curdle if it is too cold or if the sauce boils, so you must let it warm up for only a minute or two. Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve at once, garnished with a bit of minced parsley or snipped dill.