The Dairy Olympics

Way back when, when the world and this blog were young, I told a tale of leaving cream to sit out overnight and somehow not contracting food poisoning.  The story ended tragically:  not with E. coli (thank kittens), but with a wasted batch of cream.

This past weekend, I issued myself a Dairy Challenge and decided to try my hand once again at making some fancy dairy things, specifically lemon curd*, clotted cream, yogurt, and creme fraiche.  A little bold?  Perhaps.  And as the title of this post suggests, one of these did not work out.  But which one?§

Before I get into all that, though, let me tell you a story.  It's about a girl and a boy and a quest for local milk.

Back in the Time Before PHX, The Husband and I lived in New England, in a much beleaguered city affectionately known as The Woo.  Now, some people don't like The Woo, mostly because it isn't Boston.  I cannot argue this point; The Woo ≠ Boston.  But!  The Woo did have some nice things going for it, like a bar that serves the best pizza I've ever had, a farm that sold unpasteurized cider and duck eggs, and a professor who would let me play with bird bones just because I asked nicely.

It also had a family-run dairy¥ that sold things like milk and cream, which was really quite helpful as The Husband and I try our darnedest to source as many of our animal products from local farms where we can confirm for ourselves that the animals in question are raised humanely.  We gave up meat to remove ourselves from the industrial cattle/pork/poultry system, but battery hens and commercial dairy cows still lead sad lives (if you can call them that) and we try not to support big agribusiness where possible.  That was actually my biggest worry upon moving to PHX: from where would I get my eggs and milk?  I had considered going vegan, but man, I do love milk.  And eggs for baking.  It would have been tough.

Enter Superstition Farm.  It's a local dairy farm run by the nicest people on Earth who are big into keeping their cows (and chickens, and horses, and everything) as happy and healthy as possible.  The Husband and I are members of their dairy CSA, where every two weeks we get milk, butter, cheese, ice cream, and other goodies, all made at the dairy (or their sister ice cream store) with milk from the family cows.  They also sell eggs from their free-range chickens, which are so free range they sometimes come into the store.  Also also, they let me hold said chickens.

cheep cheep!

So, armed with a lot of cream and milk from the SuperFarm, I set off on my adventures in dairy-based products.

First up, lemon curd.  Making lemon curd is a lot like making custard, in that you need to keep the temperature low and make sure that the eggs do not scramble; I like using a modified double-boiler to keep the heat under control.  Otherwise, it's pretty simple: just butter, eggs, sugar, and lemon juice.

And a peanut butter jar.

The triumvirate of clotted cream, yogurt, and creme fraiche came next, as they all had to sit out overnight before they'd be ready.  Here, a shot of the magic in progress.

dairylicious.

From left to right we have clotted cream, yogurt, creme fraiche.  Creme fraiche is the easiest: take cream, mix in cultured buttermilk (like we learned before, only cultured buttermilk will work∞), cover, and leave it out overnight to thicken up and culture.

Yogurt requires a bit more attention, in that you have to reduce milk without letting it scorch and also acquire live active yogurt cultures.  I simmered some whole milk with a vanilla bean pod, then added a bit of cream after I removed the pan from the heat.  Once the milk cooled (it has to be below 145ºF, and optimally between 104º and 108ºF), I added a dollop of SuperYogurt (full of lively flora) from the SuperFarm and stirred it up.  Yogurt also has to sit out in a warmish environment for the bacteria to kick in; using a bowl that retains heat is a good idea, as is wrapping the bowl in towels.

Clotted cream is essentially heavy cream (or a cream-whole milk blend) that has been slow cooked on low heat for hours until the cream separates and clots at the top.  The yellowish bit that formed on the bowl in the photo is the "clout" (as they say in Cornwall), the crust that sits on top of the thickened cream.

So, you've seen the picture; which one didn't work out?  Well...

The creme fraiche...seems to have turned out all right.  It might be a little thinner than the exorbitantly-priced stuff at the grocery store, but the flavor seems spot-on.  Given how it's not really eaten on its own, I think the slightly-off texture won't be much of a problem.  I consider myself redeemed!

The yogurt...also seems OK.  It is definitely not as thick as your store-bought variety, but I am blaming that on the lack of pectin and locust bean gum (so, really, it's Trader Joe's that can't make a proper yogurt without cheat ingredients).  The vanilla flavor is (very) subtle, and it's not nearly as tangy as your standard plain yogurt; I think it would go really well with some berries or other fruit.

Which leaves the clotted cream as the shameful bronze of these Dairy Games.  Since I didn't have the six or seven hours necessary to cook the cream, and am too impatient to wait for a time when I did, I tried a shortcut method that involved keeping the cream at a very specific temperature for an hour and then letting it cool.  However, given that electric stovetops are evil, and our specific stove hand-forged by the devil himself, I think I either over- or under-heated (or both) the cream and it went all hemophiliac on me and wouldn't clot.

Oh, well.  I guess I'll just have to console myself with creme fraiche scones topped with lemon curd and/or any of the homemade jams in the pantry.  Don't worry about me; I'll manage.  Somehow.
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*Lemon curd is sort of the outlier here, in that it's not really a dairy product.  It has butter, sure, but that's the only cow-based ingredient, and there's not much of it.  But let's not nitpick; let's leave that to our fellow primates for their communal grooming.
§DRAMATIC CLIFFHANGER!
¥ It also did things like sell milk in glass bottles, which is awesome.  Less awesome is when someone packs the bottles too closely together in the car, and then one shatters and gets milk all over the floor of your car and then your car smells like sour milk for months and people STILL ask you about it.
∞Creme fraiche is so elitist.