[Sca-cooks] Re: SC - yogurt Cheese 101?

[Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir]

ÚlfR wrote:

>A "moistened" cereal food. Now that you mention it I have no data
>(paging Nanna) as to the proportions in hræringur. I went for somewhere
>between 30 and 50% cheese by volume.

Well, it is a leftover dish (usually) and I've never seen a recipe that had
any set proportions. I'd probably use half of each, more or less - possibly
a little more skyr than grain. Come to think of it, I can't remember ever
having seen an actual recipe - this is a dish that didn't need one - but the
only description I have in an old cookbook says you can use oatmeal
porridge, or barley, or rye, or rice (that one I've got to try, BTW) or
Iceland moss porridge. This author recommends adding chopped lettuce to the
dish, which I've never tried. I asked my mother and she said this had
occasionally been done at her childhood home, but that chopped lettuce had
usually been eaten with just milk and sugar, as a dessert. (Yes, I know ...)

Formerly, turnip and rutabaga greens were sometimes preserved (fermented) in
skyr, which was then added to porridge. A sort of hræringur with sauerkraut.

Interesting that you tried adding skyr to hot porridge also. This is (or
was) often done here, although the cold version was much more common.

I was confused for a moment when I read "30 and 50% cheese by volume". Of
course skyr is a cheese product of sorts but no Icelander would ever think
of it as a cheese. I don't know why, it just isn't cheese, period, not even
when it is used in cooking in a similar manner to cheese - which it was,
quite a lot, in former times. Not exactly dried but much drier than the skyr
we have today. The skyr of my childhood (1960s) could be crumbled - it was
cut in chunks and sold wrapped in paper. Today's skyr is soft and smooth and
is sold in plastic beakers.

(Oops - nu kommar jag ihåg att jag hadde sagt att jag ville skicka något
torrkat fisk til deg. Det skall jag fixa redan i morgon - jag hadde komplett
glömt det. Sorry.)

Nanna