SC - A new project....

[Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir]

Seumas wrote:

>I found one sight with a skyr recipe at
>
>http://www.neosoft.com/recipes/eggs-dairy/skyr.html
>
>She uses fresh buttermilk as the starter.

Yes, I´ve seen that too. Here, naturally soured milk might be used if a
starter wasn´t available - sometimes mixed with an egg or egg white - but
the new skyr wasn´t considered good enough until after you had made the skyr
several times, always taking a new starter from your latest batch.

>Thanks for the flavour assessment (more tart than yogurt). That will
>help me test it.

Another thing I forgot to mention is that you´ve got to be pretty careful
with the temperature of the milk. If you add the starter and rennet when it
is too hot you will get coarse, curdled skyr, called graðhestaskyr (stallion
skyr). If it is too cold it will be thin, glundur (slop) and said to have a
"cold taste".


>Could you comment on the flavour and appearance of bilberries and
>crowberries? Ever picked them wild? What type of ground and climate do
>they prefer?


Have I picked them wild? Every other day during late August/early September
in my childhood, even more after we moved to a fishing village built
practically in the middle of a berryfield. Here in Reykjavík, you´ve got to
drive for 10-15 minutes to find crowberries and bog bilberries; true
bilberries mostly grow in the West and North.

They prefer cool climates; crowberries are rare south of
(Northern)Scandinavia but I understand they grow abundantly in Alaska and
Canada. They are small, pitch black and shiny, slightly tart and probably do
not taste wonderful to people used to a wide variety of berries and fruit.
Bilberries are dark blue, sometimes almost black, somewhat smaller than
American blueberries, and not very dissimilar in flavor (some will tell you
they are inferior to blueberries, others, including me, hold a different
opinion). They grow in Northern Europe, in Scotland and Ireland, and in New
England and perhaps other northerly regions as well; they are often called
whortleberries in America. The bog bilberry is fairly similar to the
bilberry but has the color of a blueberry. The difference in taste is
reflected in the Icelandic names; bog bilberry is bláber (blueberry),
bilberry is aðalbláber (main blueberry).

Nanna