Saturday, February 4, 2012

Clobbered Cream



Every now and then it's good to notice you've been talking a particular talk but not walking the walk: I've been saying for a long time that milk or cream just left out rots if it's pasteurized. But raw milk naturally ferments. Have I ever just let it do that? On the counter and unattended? Last week I was making butter, which ended up going into a bizarre 16th century recipe I'm talking about next week at a cookbook conference in NY. Let me just say this recipe I'm pretty sure has never been translated into English and I doubt has been cooked using original techniques, at last for 400 years or so. So I had some raw cream left over. I just left it out. And in one week this is what happened. Not very sour, rather pleasant and buttery. I'm not sure if it's creme fraiche or clabbered cream or what, but it did it to itself. GOT to love bacteria!

7 comments:

Ken Albala said...

The butter movie is here! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRm3WRdOMpw

Deana Sidney said...

getting my first raw milk this week... can't wait to see how it tastes and works. I have been wailing at the loss of my favorite dairy... went belly-up with no notice. Store-bought milk just sucks. your cream looks wonderful

Unknown said...

It's a clabber! Isn't that magic? The Devonshire cream recipe (also a clabber) usually goes something like this: leave the cream on the back of the stove until thick. Stir. Voila! It is amazing that bacteria is so feared that this lovely result of leaving cream alone is often (I surmise) thrown out simply because it changed from good to better.

emily's kitchen said...

So the bacteria for bread and alcohol fermentation, I think, especially love and are sweet in cream..So a kitchen rife w bacteria, like yours, clearly makes the best environment for a particularly beautiful clabber.

Ken Albala said...

Yes Emily. I think it is all pretty much the same bacteria, many of them, not just one as would be added with a starter. Hey HOW have you been? Not a word in a long time.

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Ken Albala said...

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