Back on the Yogurt Train: How to Make Yogurt

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Fermentation, Food, Recipes
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This is how I want my yogurt.
Dadiah, traditional West Sumatran water buffalo yogurt, fermented in bamboo segments. Courtesy of Wikimedia. Photo by Meutia Chaeran.
Mrs. Homegrown here:
One reason I make a lot of my own stuff is because I’m trying to avoid plastic packaging. And as I’m sure you know, that’s pretty much impossible these days–but I do what I can. Lately I’ve realized that one consistent source of waste plastic in our kitchen comes in the form of yogurt tubs. This is a little silly, because we know how to make yogurt. In fact, I do believe we covered it in our book.
Thing is, back in the day when we made yogurt, it was Erik’s job. When he slacked on it, I didn’t even consider picking it up. Chalk it up to the mysteries of division of labor in a household.
Anyway, we went to see Mark Frauenfelder talk about his great new book, Made by Hand, and one of things he mentioned was how much he and his family are digging making their own yogurt–and how cost effective it’s been for them. He inspired me to get back on the yogurt train.
It’s so darn easy, we should all be on the yogurt train. One great thing about it is that it not only saves money, but it saves packaging, and gives you more bang for your milk buck. We only use milk for coffee around here, so sometimes our milk goes bad. Now we make most of it into yogurt and there’s no waste, no excess packaging. And if we make some of that yogurt into yogurt cheese or use it instead of sour cream, that saves more packaging.
How to Make Yogurt:
Here’s how I’m making yogurt these days–it might vary a little from Erik’s methodologies in our book, but all yogurt making is basically the same. You’ll need a cooler for this.
Gather together:
  1. A cooler to keep the yogurt warm while it ferments. I’m sure there are many ways to keep yogurt warm, but I find the cooler straightforward, and that’s what I’m going to describe here. We make two quarts at a time in a little six pack cooler.
  2. Very clean canning-type jars
  3. Hot water bottle (optional)
  4. Towel(s) for insulation
  5. Your last store bought container of yogurt. You need live yogurt to start the culture, only a few spoonfuls. The label should say something about containing live, active cultures. You’ll need 1 Tablespoon of live yogurt for every quart of milk you’re transforming.
  6. Milk, of course. Make sure your milk doesn’t say “Ultra Pasturized” or UP on the label. That stuff is just nasty. Otherwise, you can use whole, 2%, 1% — and even skim, I presume, though I’ve never tried it. How much milk? As much as you want. But it seems to me that for the trouble, a quart would be the minimum it would be worthwhile making. After all, it keeps a long time. 
The procedure:
  • Heat milk gently to 180 degrees Fahrenheit. If you’ve got a thermometer, great. If you don’t, 180F is where the milk starts to simmer. Just watch for those first tiny bubbles to start rising. When they do, turn off the heat. (Heating the milk makes for thicker yogurt. You could skip this step if you like. I would skip it if I got my hands on some nice raw milk.)
  • Let the milk cool down to about 110F. This is the only hard part–waiting for it to cool. 110F is about as hot as a hot bath. You can put your finger in it and keep it there.
  • While you’re waiting, boil water to heat your jars. I like to fill my jars with boiling water, cap them, and let them sit until it’s time to use them, at which point I pour the water out. I know it’s not really sterilization, but it’s something, and it pre-heats the jars, which is important. You could also pull the jars straight from a hot dishwasher, or actually boil them. Also, you’ll want to pre-heat your cooler. Pour hot water in it as well and let it sit until the last moment. And fill up your hot water bottle, if you have one.
  • Stir in 1 Tablespoon of yogurt for every quart of milk in your pot. Use no more than that. Stir until dissolved.
  • Transfer the inoculated milk into warm jars, cap them, and stuff them into the warm cooler (which you’ve emptied of water). Do all this fast so you don’t lose much heat. Your mission is to fill the cooler up, so there’s no empty space, with some combination of jars of yogurt, towels and heating devices like hot water bottles or lacking one of those, just more jars filled with hot water. My routine is to put 2 quart jars in a six pack cooler, slide a hot water bottle between them, and pack the top of the cooler with an old towel, so that I can just barely manage to lock the lid in place.
  • The goal is to keep the yogurt very warm for about 8-12 hours. You might not be able to keep it at 110F the whole time, but it should be in that neighborhood. Certainly above body temperature. My set up described above seems to do that well enough. I’ve never checked the temp. inside, fearing to lose the heat. It just works.
  • After 8-12 hours the milk in the jars should look yogurty and taste yogurty. It might not appear thick enough, but remember that it is quite warm. It will thicken some after it goes in the fridge.
  • If it doesn’t look yogurty at all, add a smidge more starter, rewarm the cooler and everything, and try it again for another 8 hours. Consider that your starter–your store bought yogurt–may not be alive. Either that or the cooler wasn’t warm enough.

Mad Hen

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Animals, Bikes, Chickens, Events
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One of our hens will be featured in the new Coco’s Variety ad campaign. What’s Coco’s Variety you ask?

“Coco’s Variety’s primary business is bicycles. Additionally, we sell Japanese figural pencil erasers, used bike parts, old toolboxes, books worth owning, bike pumps, balsa wood gliders, pocket knives, Lodge cast iron frying pans, glass water bottles, Park bicycle tools, wicker bike baskets and Dutch bicycle cargo bags for the carting of fresh produce, the transportation of books of French poetry and the rescuing of kittens.”

If you’re not in Los Angeles, you can get a virtual Coco’s experience on their awesome blog at: http://www.cocosvariety.com/.

Via the magic of the interwebs we offer you an exclusive behind the scenes look at Coco’s proprietor Mr. Jalopy making advertising history:

Bean Fest, Episode 3: Bastardized Puerto Rican Beans

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Bean Fest, Food, Recipes
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Mrs. Homegrown here:

It’s been a tough week here on the bean front. I had two beanfail incidents trying to come up with a recipe for this week. The first, an Armenian recipe for white beans, failed through no fault of its own but because the beans were hopelessly old. No matter how long I cooked them, they stayed crunchy, yet somehow also tasted overcooked. Shudder.

Meanwhile, I’d been obsessing on Cuban-style black beans, but fell into a deep well of confusion–as so commonly happens when trying to find practical info. on the interwebs. Vinegar, sherry or wine? Sugar–really? How much? When does the sofrito go in? Is pork truly optional?

Last night I set aside my Cuban plans in frustration and opened up Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian–a generally solid cooking resource. He had a recipe for black beans and rice cooked together in a pot in the oven. Intrigued, I gave it a try. I won’t disect the recipe here, but suffice it to say the results were perilously close to hippie slop. Erik thought it was not a bad recipe, just not one that can stand on its own. It was sort of like an extra hearty rice pilaf that perhaps wanted something big and savory to accompany it. We threw lots of Bulgarian feta on it and called it a night.

This morning I decided to try one more recipe for lunch, so I’d have something to post today. I’m glad I did, because it was super tasty. Hallelujah!!

It was sent in by one of our readers, John of Yome Sweet Yome. I’m glad he wrote in, because that way I discovered his blog. He and his partner I doing what I’ve always wanted to do: building their own house on a nice chunk of land in the beautiful Northwest. Go check it out. I think I might be doing some vicarious living via the blog reader for the next few months.

I like his voice, so I’m going to post the recipe as he sent it, rather than reshaping it into a more traditional recipe form, but I’ll add some of my own notes, and hope they’re more helpful than confusing.

John’s Bastardized Puerto Rican Beans

One of my favorite recipes is a bastardized version on a traditional Puerto Rican dish. It goes like so…

Start them nice and early in the day and invite friends over for dinner. Slow is the only way…. Everything tastes better with a heavy dose of expectation….

The bean does not humor any shortcuts. Soak (at least) overnight.
Start cooking pre-soaked beans in lightly salted water (or broth, if you’ve got it lying around and feel decadent). Give them a bit of a head start before you start the rest of the dish.

• I made this with black beans (though later he says he usually uses pintos or reds). My beans measured 1 cup unsoaked, and after overnight soaking, 2 cups. You’d probably want to use more beans than that, but this was all I had pre-soaked. I put them in a saucepan, covered them with water, about an inch over the top of the beans, brought them to a boil and then reduced them to a simmer. I didn’t salt the water, because I’m of the “salt toughens the skins” school. Do what thou wilt.

Finely chop up equal parts cilantro and parsley, stems and all. More than you think you’ll need. A good handful of each.

• He doesn’t mean a handful of chopped herbs–he means you should start with a big fat handful of stems. I used a full bunch of each, and it was not too much. See, you’re going to cook the beejezus out of them, so they’ll reduce. You need to start with lots. I really don’t think you can use too much.

Saute diced yellow onion in oil, or rendered bacon fat, should you be of the persuasion. When they get translucent, toss in a generous amount of chopped garlic and your parsley and cilantro.

• I used one big onion and 3 or 4 large cloves of garlic. And I’d keep that 1 onion to 1 cup of dried beans proportion if I made a bigger batch. I did all of my chopping in the food processor. I usually chop onions and stuff with a knife, but I was in a hurry. In retrospect, I think it was good that everything was chopped very fine. So if you’re knife chopping, put in that extra effort.

Cook until it turns somewhere between a hunter green and brown in color. Deglaze with white wine or stock.

• This made me laugh. Hunter green? I like that he was color specific because I am afraid of overcooking, so I tend to undercook. The herbs looked gorgeous when they hit the heat and turned bright green. That’s where I would stop cooking if left to my own devices. But I understood that deglazing means scraping yummy brown bits off the bottom of a pan, and that meant that the herbs had to cook toward brown. Or at least hunter green. What this all means is that you will have to attend your onion/garlic/herb mix over medium heat, stirring pretty frequently, as you watch the pretty herbs turn from bright green to dull green. The onions will become more golden, and the volume will shrink down. I didn’t take it to brown, but it was definitely drab by the time I called it quits. Sort of army green. I splashed white wine around the edges of the pan and stirred everything up to collect any caramelized bits. He says you can use stock to deglaze instead, but the wine really zings up the flavors. And the smell was heavenly.
Add some pureed tomato and mix until you have an applesauce-y consistency. Strain your beans and add them to the pan, adding just enough liquid keep them covered. Put the fire on low and let the whole shebang cook for a good long time, stirring it occasionally.

• Pureed tomato? hmmm… I wondered if he meant tomato paste. But I decided to throw some canned plum tomatoes in the food processor, since it was out anyway. I added about 1 cup of the resulting puree to the pan and mixed well. The result didn’t scream applesauce, but it was a festive red and green. And it was thick.

Then I strained the cooking water off the beans, combined them with the puree, add added enough veg stock to cover all of it, and returned it to a simmer.

My black beans must have been extra fresh, because after a half hour of cooking by themselves while I did the other stuff, they were already tender enough to eat. But I understood that this was supposed to be a long cooking recipe, that long simmering would allow the combined flavors to marry, so I let them cook on for about 30 or 35 minutes more, adding stock and stirring to make sure they didn’t burn. But I was starving and Erik was nosing around, so that was all the time they got. Still, it was gooooood. But there’s more instructions to come–salt and pepper make an appearance, as does sour cream….

This is usually where I throw a jalapeno or bell pepper on the fire and roast them for later.
• Oh yes–I scorched whole jalapenos in a cast iron pan while I cooked down the onions and stuff.
When the beans are cooked through, season with salt, pepper and cumin. Add your chopped up roasted peppers and serve over rice with a dollop of sour cream and call it Sofrito! Unless you’re serving it to a Puerto Rican, in which case don’t call it anything, and you didn’t get the recipe from me!

• Sorry John. Now the whole internet knows you’ve taken liberties with Puerto Rican cuisine. Good thing you live in some undisclosed woodland location!

So yes, toward the end I added plenty of salt and pepper and cumin, and for thrills another splash of white wine. I was cooking black beans, and I think they can taste kind of dull without the help of some acid. But other beans might not want all this wine.

I usually use red or pintos. For a twist, use chickpeas and add some diced potatoes and turmeric for a more middle eastern taste.
Hoorah!

• Hoorah is right. These are the kind of beans I love. Savory. Luscious with sour cream or yogurt. And they really weren’t hard to make at all. The long cooking of the onion, garlic and herbs at the beginning gives it a deep flavor underpinning that just doesn’t happen when you just sort of throw onions, beans and spices together and hope for the best. There’s a lesson to be learned there.

I only wish I’d made two or three times as much. 2 cups of soaked beans makes about enough to feed two hungry people. I wish I had leftovers, because I suspect it would have been better the next day.


A Hairy Cucumber: Mezzo Lungo di Polignano

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Food, Gardening
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There’s a crass joke or limerick to be made here but I’ll leave that up to you, our dear readers. I’ll just say that this cucumber, an Italian heirloom called Mezzo Lungo di Polignano, has done well for us this summer. No powdery mildew and it’s tasty. I got the seeds from Craig Ruggless at www.gardenedibles.com. I wrote Craig to ask him about it and he replied,

“This is one of my favorites. They are also very good when left on the vine to get larger. Be sure to peel and remove the seeds. They make a great “boat” for salad fillings Like tuna or salmon with lemon and capers in maybe a mayo or yogurt dressing.”

The salad boat idea, in our case with tomatoes and a yogurt dressing, made for one of my favorite meals this summer. As for the hairy skin–biodiversity in action–and there something to be said for variety and aesthetics even though that crazy skin never ends up on the dining room table.

It’s Official: Erik is Insane

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Gardening, Squash Baby
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Our parkway garden

It’s true. Erik has gone insane trying to protect his baby. His squash baby.

A little background:

We’ve long gardened in two raised beds in the parkway in front our house (the parkway being the space between the sidewalk and the street). This is officially city property, though we are responsible for maintaining it. It gets great morning light, so it’s a valuable growing space. It’s also fun to garden out in public, so we can talk to our neighbors and get all the fresh gossip, and show little kids what food looks when its growing.

The drawback to a public garden, of course, is that it is defenseless. This means that dogs and cats and sometimes people tromp through the beds, scattering freshly planted seeds and smashing delicate seedlings. If the plants survive, then they become subject to theft. Now, we don’t mind sharing food. The parkway isn’t really ours, after all, so we figure what grows down there is fair game. Generally we either grow things down there that are easy to share–like beans or cherry tomatoes–or things people aren’t likely to pilfer–like greens.

This all changed this year, because Erik decided to plant squash down there. Not just any squash, but this fantastical Italian winter squash called Lunga di Napoli. It’s a green skinned squash, rather like a butternut in shape and texture, except it can reach a meter in length.

At the time of planting, I did the wifely, “Honey, are you sure that’s a good idea?” thing. It’s just not a good idea to plant high-investment crops in the parkway. He assured me he knew it was a risk, but he wanted to try, and we didn’t have space to plant it anywhere else. “No big deal,” he said. Back then he was reasonable.

Since then, our parkway has turned into a dense jungle. *** Note: We love our tolerant neighbors!!!! *** There’s not only squash growing in those two small beds, there’s also scarlet runner beans, strangely hairy cucumbers, volunteer tomatoes and giant lamb’s quarters going to seed. The giant squash tendrils are spreading across our driveway and walk. Sure, it’s better to be lush than bare, but it looks crazy. Grey Gardens type crazy. In my more optimistic moments I think of it as a “food forest.” I tried to take pics, but it’s hard to capture the wildness of the space.

Very like the jungle swallowed the ruins of Palenque on the Yucatan peninsula, our Scarlet Runner bean long ago swamped its trellis.
Hairy cucumber and tiny tomatoes growing together. The beds have their moments of beauty.

Back to the squash. It only bore two fruits. Erik began to obsess over them as soon as they appeared. How would they ever live to maturity? He just knew a thief would take them at zucchini size, and then they’d never reach their potential. Suddenly, it was of utmost importance to him that these squash reach their full one meter length. I trembled with dread and ill foreboding.

The remaining Squash Baby, currently measuring 20 inches or so.

One morning the inevitable happened. Erik stomped into the house, crying, “The %$#$!*s took my squash! They took my squash!” The smaller of the two squashes was gone, picked long before its time. After a brief period of depression, which he spent either cursing the unjust nature of the universe or reiterating his desire to chop down all the trees in our backyard, so as to maximize secure growing space (which is not going to happen as long as I’m around!), Erik began to scheme.

And now, we are the proud proprietors of Garden Guantanamo. The remaining squash baby –and it really is baby sized, and growing fast–soon I will have to refer to it as the squash toddler–is wrapped in layers of chicken wire and spiked deep in the earth. But that was not enough. He’s also surrounded the entire parkway with a cordon of bright yellow rope (invoking police tape?) and most alarming of all, fashioned little signs that say “Warning: Experimental/Not For Human Consumption/No Es Comida” and staked them at 3 foot intervals on all sides.

Lousy pic of one of the signs, obscured by windblown lamb’s quarters.

I’ll admit I’ve put up my share of signs in my time (Keep Door Closed, Turn Off Lights, Don’t Eat the Cake in the Fridge, etc.). But age brings wisdom, and I’ve learned that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who read signs and those who don’t. And the great irony is that those who read signs don’t need the signs in the first place. And those who need the signs never, ever read them.

In other words, I don’t think the signs are going to work. And I’m dreading my neighbors asking me what’s experimental about our food.

In the meanwhile people, pray for Erik and his squash baby. And I’ll keep you updated.