Om Nom Nom: Naan and Supernaan
The 70s are just far enough in the past that the hallmark of every yard sale, the Salton Yogurt Maker, is no longer available. (Either that or, like with the saucepans, they carefully monitor my activities and wait until I'm gone to bring out the yogurt makers.) (cut for length)
The much-awaited Hamilton Park Festival was this past Saturday. It was a bit Supermarket Sweep, since I went with my CSA partner so the route from yoga class was slowed down by a long chat with the yoga teacher, a bathroom break, a coffee break, and a cigarette break, on a cloudy day with thunderstorms forecast. So perhaps there WAS a yogurt maker, I just didn't see it in my fly-over.
However, I *did* buy three pint canning jars with lids (they threw in a fourth without a lid). And they're Ball and not Kerr jars, so they're not B7 Association Items.
In order to put a smaller amount of milk at risk, I decided to try making a pint of yogurt. So I washed out a jar in very hot water, scalded a pint of milk, and set it aside to cool down. I suspect some earlier yogurt failures were caused by being in too big a hurry. My very first, long-ago deployment of the Salton resulted in my melting the plastic thermomo-spoon, so I *can't* use it to measure the temperature of the milk. (Yeah, I know, I could buy another thermometer, but that seems a bit pusillanimous.) I also turned on the oven at the lowest possible temperature, and turned it off a few minutes later.
Another problem is that I haven't gotten the starter yogurt blended well enough into the milk. So I tried using the immersion blender, which produced something that was certainly homogeneous, but was also frothy, which is probably counter-productive. I stirred it down a bit, and poured as much as would fit into a pint jar. I capped the jar, and put it into the oven in a loaf pan full of hot tap water.
Eight hours later, it still hadn't thickened much, but I had a feeling that if I let it cool down and then refrigerated it, it would count as thin yogurt but yogurt nonetheless.
In the morning, it was pleasantly tart, but a little grainy, so I decided it was Cooking Yogurt. So I made another batch of yeasted flatbreads. I warmed up the yogurt in a saucepan (it separated, but hey, I was about to mix and knead it, so it didn't matter), and poured it over four cups of atta (Indian whole-wheat pastry flour) and one cup of millet flour and added half a teaspoon of yeast, a sprinkling of nigella seeds (kalonji) and some salt. The dough was still a little dry so I added some hot tap water, mixed and kneaded the dough, and let it rise for a couple of hours. Then I patted out nine flatbreads and cooked them in a hot non-stick pan with a smidge of oil, because I'm planning to make curry tonight.
Cabbage, with frozen spinach (CSA starts this week, so I might as well use up the stuff in the freezer) and maybe half a can of chick peas pureed in the blender to make a golden gravy. The other half of the chick peas will go into a sandwich spread with pickled red onion--I just bought the red onion but haven't pickled it yet.
The much-awaited Hamilton Park Festival was this past Saturday. It was a bit Supermarket Sweep, since I went with my CSA partner so the route from yoga class was slowed down by a long chat with the yoga teacher, a bathroom break, a coffee break, and a cigarette break, on a cloudy day with thunderstorms forecast. So perhaps there WAS a yogurt maker, I just didn't see it in my fly-over.
However, I *did* buy three pint canning jars with lids (they threw in a fourth without a lid). And they're Ball and not Kerr jars, so they're not B7 Association Items.
In order to put a smaller amount of milk at risk, I decided to try making a pint of yogurt. So I washed out a jar in very hot water, scalded a pint of milk, and set it aside to cool down. I suspect some earlier yogurt failures were caused by being in too big a hurry. My very first, long-ago deployment of the Salton resulted in my melting the plastic thermomo-spoon, so I *can't* use it to measure the temperature of the milk. (Yeah, I know, I could buy another thermometer, but that seems a bit pusillanimous.) I also turned on the oven at the lowest possible temperature, and turned it off a few minutes later.
Another problem is that I haven't gotten the starter yogurt blended well enough into the milk. So I tried using the immersion blender, which produced something that was certainly homogeneous, but was also frothy, which is probably counter-productive. I stirred it down a bit, and poured as much as would fit into a pint jar. I capped the jar, and put it into the oven in a loaf pan full of hot tap water.
Eight hours later, it still hadn't thickened much, but I had a feeling that if I let it cool down and then refrigerated it, it would count as thin yogurt but yogurt nonetheless.
In the morning, it was pleasantly tart, but a little grainy, so I decided it was Cooking Yogurt. So I made another batch of yeasted flatbreads. I warmed up the yogurt in a saucepan (it separated, but hey, I was about to mix and knead it, so it didn't matter), and poured it over four cups of atta (Indian whole-wheat pastry flour) and one cup of millet flour and added half a teaspoon of yeast, a sprinkling of nigella seeds (kalonji) and some salt. The dough was still a little dry so I added some hot tap water, mixed and kneaded the dough, and let it rise for a couple of hours. Then I patted out nine flatbreads and cooked them in a hot non-stick pan with a smidge of oil, because I'm planning to make curry tonight.
Cabbage, with frozen spinach (CSA starts this week, so I might as well use up the stuff in the freezer) and maybe half a can of chick peas pureed in the blender to make a golden gravy. The other half of the chick peas will go into a sandwich spread with pickled red onion--I just bought the red onion but haven't pickled it yet.