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Authors: Elizabeth David, Jill Norman
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table until the morning, when I transfer them to the fridge. Yogurt doesn’t like to be disturbed when it’s newly made. I don’t know why but it does seem to be so. Anyway it’s a pity to break the lovely creamy crust which forms on the top when you use rich milk.
The basic points to remember about yogurt are that it doesn’t work if the milk is too hot or too cold. It shouldn’t be hotter than 54°C/130°F or cooler than 46°C/115°F. I think if you know about yeast you also soon understand about yogurt. And of course if you make it regularly, you use your own as the starter. Before long you find you’re making yogurt very superior to anything you can buy.
I believe there are many people who think you can’t make good yogurt with pasteurised milk. This really is not true. Although I will say that one year when, on a number of occasions, I managed to buy Loseley untreated Jersey milk its yogurt-making performance was spectacular. So was its flavour. Loseley don’t use it for their yogurt, though. In the first place, they say the public prefers skim-milk yogurt, and in the second, making it on a commercial scale with untreated milk isn’t feasible. Stray and unbeneficial bacteria could wreck a whole batch, and many shops wouldn’t stock it anyway. But anyone who has access to a supply of untreated milk should try making yogurt with it.
I should add that if I were going to buy new equipment for yogurt-making I’d invest in a catering-size teflon-lined saucepan. And one more point: when it doesn’t suit my timetable to wait around while the boiled milk cools to the appropriate temperature I do the boiling in advance. When it comes to making the yogurt it only takes two or three minutes to warm the milk to the right degree.
Notes
1. Yogurt made from reduced milk sets much firmer than when the milk used has been simply boiled up and left to cool.
2. Many recipes I have seen recently give temperatures too low for good yogurt-making, and also specify as little as a teaspoon of starter yogurt for 600 ml (1 pint) of milk. I find that’s not nearly enough.
3. When your yogurt begins to turn out rather thin and watery, it is time to start afresh with a new carton of commercial yogurt. I find this necessary only about once every three months. Advice to buy a fresh carton of commercial yogurt every time you make your own is sometimes given by home economists on the grounds that if you use your own yogurt contamination may occur. So long as you keep your yogurt covered and use meticulously clean spoons and flasks when making each batch, in any case, an essential of all dairy work, this advice may safely be ignored.
Masterclass , 1982
Summer Greenery
Between the fake luxury of the lavishly upholstered avocado (the development by the Israelis of a stoneless avocado shaped like a little fat sausage is going to spoil all the fun) and the chilly squalor of the slice of emulsified pâté perched on a lettuce leaf, what is there for the hors d’oeuvre course during our English summer months? No prizes. There is – apart from delicious English specialities like dressed fresh crab, Scottish smoked salmon and potted smoked haddock – a whole world of beautiful and delicate luxuries, true luxuries, such as fresh purple sprouting broccoli, fine French beans, asparagus, cooked and served almost before they have become cold, with a perfectly simple olive oil and lemon juice dressing. Above all, there are, less expensive than any of these delicacies, English-grown courgettes, the only truly new vegetable successfully produced in this country since the great tomato transplant of the turn of the century.
It is from Greece and the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean that Western Europe has learned how to appreciate this delicious and versatile miniature vegetable marrow. It was, curiouslyenough, in the island of Malta during the mid-thirties that I first became aware of the existence of the courgette. Locally grown, I fancy,
The basic points to remember about yogurt are that it doesn’t work if the milk is too hot or too cold. It shouldn’t be hotter than 54°C/130°F or cooler than 46°C/115°F. I think if you know about yeast you also soon understand about yogurt. And of course if you make it regularly, you use your own as the starter. Before long you find you’re making yogurt very superior to anything you can buy.
I believe there are many people who think you can’t make good yogurt with pasteurised milk. This really is not true. Although I will say that one year when, on a number of occasions, I managed to buy Loseley untreated Jersey milk its yogurt-making performance was spectacular. So was its flavour. Loseley don’t use it for their yogurt, though. In the first place, they say the public prefers skim-milk yogurt, and in the second, making it on a commercial scale with untreated milk isn’t feasible. Stray and unbeneficial bacteria could wreck a whole batch, and many shops wouldn’t stock it anyway. But anyone who has access to a supply of untreated milk should try making yogurt with it.
I should add that if I were going to buy new equipment for yogurt-making I’d invest in a catering-size teflon-lined saucepan. And one more point: when it doesn’t suit my timetable to wait around while the boiled milk cools to the appropriate temperature I do the boiling in advance. When it comes to making the yogurt it only takes two or three minutes to warm the milk to the right degree.
Notes
1. Yogurt made from reduced milk sets much firmer than when the milk used has been simply boiled up and left to cool.
2. Many recipes I have seen recently give temperatures too low for good yogurt-making, and also specify as little as a teaspoon of starter yogurt for 600 ml (1 pint) of milk. I find that’s not nearly enough.
3. When your yogurt begins to turn out rather thin and watery, it is time to start afresh with a new carton of commercial yogurt. I find this necessary only about once every three months. Advice to buy a fresh carton of commercial yogurt every time you make your own is sometimes given by home economists on the grounds that if you use your own yogurt contamination may occur. So long as you keep your yogurt covered and use meticulously clean spoons and flasks when making each batch, in any case, an essential of all dairy work, this advice may safely be ignored.
Masterclass , 1982
Summer Greenery
Between the fake luxury of the lavishly upholstered avocado (the development by the Israelis of a stoneless avocado shaped like a little fat sausage is going to spoil all the fun) and the chilly squalor of the slice of emulsified pâté perched on a lettuce leaf, what is there for the hors d’oeuvre course during our English summer months? No prizes. There is – apart from delicious English specialities like dressed fresh crab, Scottish smoked salmon and potted smoked haddock – a whole world of beautiful and delicate luxuries, true luxuries, such as fresh purple sprouting broccoli, fine French beans, asparagus, cooked and served almost before they have become cold, with a perfectly simple olive oil and lemon juice dressing. Above all, there are, less expensive than any of these delicacies, English-grown courgettes, the only truly new vegetable successfully produced in this country since the great tomato transplant of the turn of the century.
It is from Greece and the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean that Western Europe has learned how to appreciate this delicious and versatile miniature vegetable marrow. It was, curiouslyenough, in the island of Malta during the mid-thirties that I first became aware of the existence of the courgette. Locally grown, I fancy,
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