[Sca-cooks] Buttermilk?

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

I wrote:
>  When i was in Morocco, i had a dairy beverage which name has been
>  translated into English as buttermilk, but i know nothing of its
>  production method. It was indeed thinner than the usual USAmerican
>  cultured buttermilk. But what i found most interested was the mouth
>  sensation it induced. While not in the slightest carbonated, there was a
>  "fizzy" or "tingly" mouth feel. Was this due to lactic acid fermentation?
>  I've had plenty of dairy products produced by lactobacilli and never
>  noticed this sensation. What is this? I'd love to reproduce it or find a
>  source to purchase it.

Da answered:
>Are you sure it was cows milk ? Could have been goat or camel being in
>Morocco which may acount some  for the taste.

It is highly unlikely it was camel milk. Despite stereotypes of 
Morocco, there are not many camels there. Mostly for the benefit of 
tourists. Camels are used indigenously to a limited extent in the 
arid south. There's desertification, but it's confined to limited 
areas in the southeast where the government is making some attempts 
to halt its spread, and the southwest, where there's great political 
unrest in the desert area that was formerly under Spanish control and 
whose people were demanding independence.

As for goats, there are quite a few. But i know the taste of goat 
milk. And not just the commercial stuff from the stupormarket. A 
friend in New Mexico raised them, so i've had it fresh from the 
nanny. Much better than the commercial.

What they really have in great numbers in Morocco are sheep. I never 
saw a single huge flock of sheep. Rather, at the watering holes where 
there were many sheep, i would see many different people each of whom 
had a few sheep to make up the bigger number.

Now, i know nothing about commercial dairies involving goats or 
sheep, so i suppose sheep are possible. But I have had commercial 
sheep's milk yogurt and plenty of sheep's milk cheese, and sheep milk 
has a distinctive musky taste, milder than goat and stronger than 
cow. However, i've never drunk uncultured sheep milk, so i suppose 
it's a possibility.

This buttermilk was commercially produced, purchased at a Moroccan 
supermarket, so the milk came from a commercial dairy. Could just be 
my American mind set, but i suspect what i bought was cow's milk. 
They do have cows in Morocco. This was in Rabat, the capital of 
Morocco, and the north of Morocco is much greener than the south.

The average small farmer/husbandman in the countryside has a herd of 
animals that is quite mixed. A few sheep, a few goats, a cow or two, 
a donkey or a mule (more likely a donkey), only rarely a horse, and 
in the south maybe a camel.

>Also it could have been raw
>butter milk slightly fermented. Not all the world has our health law
>standards.

This is certainly a possibility. But with all the French influence on 
Morocco and the fact that Pasteur was French, leads me to think it 
may well have been pasteurized. But it could have been raw milk. 
There is commercial raw milk here in California.

I dunno, anybody? Would raw milk get tingly more easily than pasteurized?

Anahita