SC - Re: SC_ Shrooms of the Wild

[RANDALL DIAMOND]

Seumas wrote:

>TTBOMK, it's curds from fresh or sour milk. The exact nature of it, and
>how it might differ from cottage or ricotta cheeses as sold here in the
>United States, I don't know yet. It could be tart like yogurt, or not,
>AFAIK. Seems to be the primary consumed dairy product of early Iceland,
>often with fruit mixed in. Am I correct, Nanna?

>From the Settlement right up until the 1980s, I´d say, and still very
popular.


Skyr is a cultured milk product - you use warmed milk, non-homogenized or
skimmed (cow´s or ewe´s milk, but these days it is always cow´s milk), add
starter (a bacterial culture) and rennet, let it cool, then pour it into a
sieve and let it stand overnight, while the whey (sýra) is draining away.
I´m not convinced you can make authentic skyr without a starter but there
are several recipes floating around the web somewhere that use a substitute.
You can see some photos of a school class making skyr here (the text and
recipe is in Icelandic, unfortunately, but basically it is 10 litres skimmed
milk, 6 drops of rennet, a heaped tablespoon of traditional skyr and two
tablespoons of cream (optional)).

http://www.krokur.is/~vhlskoli/Nordliv/skyrgerd/welcome.html

Skyr is not much like cottage cheese or ricotta cheese. If anyone is
familiar with Greek yoghurt, then I find it comes reasonably close to
modern, fairly mild and smooth, versions of skyr (I freely substitute them
in recipes) but the traditional skyr is much more tart and and thicker, so
it can be cut with a knife - it is usually diluted with milk or water and
heavily sugared when eaten as a dessert or breakfast dish, which is what
most people do. I, however, use unsweetened traditional skyr for lots of
things - cakes, bread, dips and sauces, soups, stews - oh, and it is very
good as a topping for baked potatoes, as Alan Davidson and I discovered when
we were doing some culinary experiments with the skyr I brought him when I
visited him in London earlier this year. BTW, if anyone has the early issues
of PPC, there is an article on skyr-making there - issue 3 or 4, I believe.

>(enjoying the image of this tall ruddy Icelandr eating his 'fruit and
>yougurt')


Berjaskyr - skyr mixed with bilberries and crowberries - is actually my
favorite food ever. And hræringur - skyr mixed with cold oatmeal
porridge -is one of the very few foods I really dislike. Unfortunately, my
mother served it about three times a week when I was a child. So did most
other housewifes in the region. I last ate it on 25 March, 1974, at 8.30 PM,
and I know that because I was so famished after the birth of my first child
that when the midwife went to get me some food and returned with a bowl of
hræringur, which was the only thing to be had in the kitchen at that hour, I
ate it greedily. But when I had my son a few years later, I took a packet of
cookies to the hospital just in case.

Nanna