SC - Irish period recipes??

[Dottie Elliott]

LrdRas wrote:

> I don't remember using the word "pasteurized" when I posted my tho'ts on sour
> cream.I can alomost accept your statement about the need for the appropriate
> bacteria as an innoculant. However, those of us who have the benefits of being
> raised on a farm have the bacteria needed for making fermented milk products
> flosting around in great abundance thus making it easier to produce assorted
> porducts of the type in question without the need to purchase inoculants.

I'm fine with all this...my only point was that the specific
microbe/bug/bacterium used industrially to make "Sour Cream", which is
probably abundant on Eastern European farms, may not be present on
yours, resulting in a perfectly good, but slightly different, final
product. It's the same with yogurt: the product varies according to
which strain you use. Obviously what you suggest is far more like what
would have been done, in, say, period France, but smetana is probably
not really what they would have gotten for their efforts.
> 
> Granted that the artifficially sterile invironment of the vast majority of
> modern homes reduces the chances for "good" bacteria to be floating around to
> almost nil, my post may not be the way to go for the majority of the list.

Actually, my last wheel of slipcote cheese, made in my little apartment
in Queens, actually developed quite a nice blue mold on it, which I
immediately encouraged to grow inside the cheese by sterilizing a needle
and poking deep holes in the cheese, thus resulting in a Vinny Blue
slipcote, which proved quite harmless, and actually quite tasty. 

In general, yes, though, I agree with you in regards to the loss of good
strains of bacteria through sterilization. Obviously it makes sense from
a safety and cost control perspective, but it is still part and parcel
of what I like to call the Stouffer Law of Enforced Mediocrity, which
states, more or less, that when food is prepared under conditions so
perfectly controlled so as to eliminate the possiblity of anything
really bad happening, nothing realy good happens, either. The Stouffer
Brothers, originally hoteliers, and untimately founders of the frozen
food empire baearing their name, are responsible for the recipe kitchen,
where cooks work directly from recipe cards posted on the walls, with
every ingredient measured down to the last molecule, cooking times to
the second, and temperatures to the degree. Plate designs/layouts are
based on photographs of what the management feels the plate should look
like, and it is therefore possible to hire completely untrained cooks
for next to nothing, and have them produce food that will never actually
be utterly inedible. Trouble is, it will never be good, either. 
 
> Rather than just soured cream, I would suggest a better term for the counter
> top product which UNPASTERIZED, RAW, UNHOMOGINIZED straight from the cow milk
> might be "creme freche".

Same-o same-o, I believe. Creme Fraiche also has a distinctive flavor
and texture (and little bubbles, too!) because of the bacterium living
in it. On the other hand, I never said there was anything wrong with
cream that has soured under the right conditions, so soured cream isn't
necessarily a bad thing. BTW: you never used the word "pasteurized",
that was Margali, I believe. I just thought the concept of raw,
unhomogenized, pasteurized milk was kinda funny.
> 
> I might also add that modern social brainwashing with regards to certain foods
> being processed at room temperatures does not necessarily make for a
> "YECCCCH!!!! GROSSSSSS!!!" end product. After 44 yrs. of producing assorted
> foods as the majority of people did up until the advent of electricity, I can
> assure that neither I nor anyone else has been sickened by the result of my
> labors.
> 
> Now, I concede that you can make the process occur a little faster and reduce
> the risk of "bad" organisms if you introduce a bit of inoculate from a past
> batch or from a sterile packet but I cannot agree that this is a necessity
> under all conditions. My strawberry wine,for instance, is a taste treat but I
> cannot produce it unless the berries are started in a single corner of my
> basement where the yeasts that produce the wine live naturally. If I try to
> reproduce it in other spots it always sours instead of producing wine.

And I'm sure you could use a commercial yeast product, under fully
sterile conditions, that would produce strawberry wine that never went
off before bottling, never develops scungy stuff floating on the
surface, never gets ropy, and which is ALMOST as good, but not quite, as
what you are producing now. This is why all the fruited wheat beers you
run into in the SCA will never be lambic, for all the care that is taken
in their production. People sometimes forget where their commercial
yeast starters come from. Effectively, they come originally from places
like the corner of Lord Ras's basement, or a cobwebby barn somewhere in
Belgium. Now for molds, I refer you to the top shelf of the steel
shelving unit I use for a pantry... .

Adamantius
______________________________________
Phil & Susan Troy
troy at asan.com
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