Curious Cook

Curious Cook in the New York Times: Making yogurt and crème fraîche

In this month's column I write about cultured dairy products and how to make them at home. I've also put together a recipe for a hybrid between two Indian desserts, easy shrikhand (sweetened drained yogurt) and tricky mishti doi (milk cooked down by about half, then fermented into yogurt). It sweetens a drained yogurt with its own whey, cooked down with sugar to make a tart caramel.

For two dozen unusual recipes from the yogurt belt (Eastern Europe to India), including "proto-pasta" made from yogurt and wheat, see Anne Mendelson's recent and fine book Milk (Knopf, 2008).

 

Curious Cook in the New York Times: Organic produce and yak cheese

In today's Curious Cook column I write about nutritional claims made for organic fruits and vegetables and for yak cheese made in Nepal.

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 Benbrook, C. et al. New Evidence Confirms the Nutritional Superiority of Plant-based Organic Foods. The Organic Center, March 2008.

http://www.organic-center.org/science.nutri.php?action=view&report_id=126

 

Or-Rashid, M.M. et al. Fatty acid composition of yak (Bos grunniens) cheese including conjugated linoleic acid and trans-18:1 fatty acids. J. Agricultural and Food Chemistry 2008, 56: 1654-60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/jf0725225

 

In the dark: olive oil, milk, butter, and beer

In my last post I mentioned that olive oil is best stored in the dark. The same is true for milk and butter and beer. It's turning out that all these foods are sensitive to light for similar reasons.