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).

 

They Do the Work, You Reap the Yogurt

RIGHT now my kitchen is teeming with bacteria, and I’m doing everything I can to make them feel at home. They’re lactic acid bacteria, the ones that ferment milk into yogurt and buttermilk, cream into crème fraîche. I’ve been making all of these, as well as milk thickened with reputedly beneficial “probiotic” lactic acid bacteria. And getting to know viili, a Finnish fermented milk that reminds me of the Japanese soy product natto. It’s slithery.