A Creamery Revitalized

 It is a rarity to get cultured butter in the US,even rarer from a small privately owned creamery. Yet there is one where both home and professional chefs can find it. best of all it will be around for a long time.

Creator of the popular new York Times Food section column " A Good Appetite,"Melissa Clark wrote about Animal Farm Creamery in yesterday's section.The dairy farm has recently undergone new ownership since original owner Diane St Clair, sold it back in February. She herded her group of well loved cows into a trailer and drove them from their first location in Orwell, Vermont to the Rolling Bale Farm in Shoreham Vermont located on the southernmost shores of Lake Champlain. Ms. St Clair had made a name for herself, supplying cultured butter to such restaurants as French Laundry and Per Se. it costs a whopping $60 a pound!!! Despite the butter being the most sought after in the country Ms. St. Clair was ready for retirement. At sixty-five she wanted something different, hence the reason for starting her own perfume company St. Clair Scents/ Yet her beloved bovines were still very  important to her.  These were the cows that create that fantastic butter with names like Diva and Cinnamon. Enter Ben and Hillary Haigh who enthusiastically bought the business, with the promise of tendler loving care for the animals.

Will the Haighs continue the cultured butter? Yes.It's rare to get it here in the States.Culturing is standard in Europe where it produces premium butter.It's the process of adding bacterial cultures to cream and then left to ferment. The process is not unlike grapes fermenting into wine. Culturing gives the final product a fluffier texture and a tangier flavor It's usually salted.  (Keep in mind you can make it at home too).It was a standard in US homes until the arrival of pasteurized butter where there was widespread industrialization. That butter, the ones used every day, are pale in color and blandly sweet in taste.Ms. St Clair wanted to make a change in the industry, creating small batches that were sent to chefs like Thomas Keller , owner of French Laundry,  He fell in love with it and ordered as much as he could. It was then she bought the small dairy, bought a few more cows and produced one hundred (!) pounds of butter a week. There was also byproduct of buttermilk too.As a plus to the piece, Ms Clark includes recipe for a Green Goddess salad with a fresh buttermilk dressing and almond butter cookies with a buttery sweet glaze.

Rolling Bales Farms will continue the tradition of making cultured butter. It is a treat to have, even better to add to all sorts of recipes.As long as their are dedicated dairy farmers , there will be this creamy bar  of goodness.

Spiked Seltzers For Summer

Seltzer was always seen as the supporting player in cocktails and spritzers.It gave a fizzy kick to mix drinks and wine. Now there's a new kind of seltzer that's a star. It's the hard kind , guaranteed less calories but more of a buzz.

Joshua M. Bernstein  who has written several books about beer and plans tasting tours for  beer connoisseurs wrote about this relatively new offshoot. Hard seltzer is seltzer  with fermented sugar and barley malt to give it the shot of alcohol. It can be tough for manufacturers looking to retain the water's blank canvas. During the fermentation process yeast create aroma and character - perfect for beer  - not so great for fizzy water. One brewery, Platform Beer Company spent six month refining recipes and techniques before settling on the barley malt and  cane sugar that is run through a special filtration process. The company also uses a brewing enzyme to reduce gluten content.It worked. The founder,Paul Benner was surprised at the clarity and how much the final product looks like water. By December , the company debuted its'  sparkling Black Cherry that contained only one hundred calories and  four grams of carbohydrates. Unfortunately the FDA forbids alcohol companies to make health claims about their products. However breweries prominently display the calories and amount of carbs on the cans,

The big question is will hard seltzer make a splash in the drinks world? Most people do like it. It's a polarizing guilty pleasure and some find it more refreshing than craft beers and hard ciders. Still, there will always be skeptics. The creator of HRD WTR, Eddie Leon, has said it's a fun ride like a moped, but you don't want to be caught riding one. Yet hard seltzer could catch on with more people. There's the diet factor although most drinks, including some cocktails like mimosas and gin and tonics are very low in calories. . Another reason is that seltzer can blend with any fruit juice or even macerated fruit such as strawberries. Add a few blueberries or a lime slice to a hard seltzer and it's a fun buzzy sip ,Hard seltzers come in many flavors. One company , White Claw,  has mango, black cherry and natural  lime.Another brand,Truly Spiked and Sparkling has even more flavors , including grapefruit and pomelo pomegranate, and lemon and yuzo. Smirnoff, the vodka people,have dipped their toes in the sparkling waters and offer such diverse flavors as watermelon and raspberry rose.

Hard seltzer is an intriguing idea. Will it be as popular as hard ciders and lemonades? Probably.  People will want a light and fizzy change of pace and hard seltzer will fill that bill.

The Sweet Side Of Vinegar

Vinegar is a kitchen staple. everyone has a bottle of either red wine, apple cider or balsamic. Thanks to the fermentation craze, home chefs are making it at home. This complex ingredient is actually the easiest to create. It just takes wine, cider or time.

It fascinated famed chef and regular contributor , Tejal Rao in today's issue of the New York Times Food section.There is a steadily growing  swath of enthusiasts , from professional chefs to home ones who are creating bottles of their own. Vinegar's name , come from  the French vin aigre - sour wine yet it can be made from fruits,vegetables (!)grains and syrups. Th earliest ones were probably made from leftover wines and bumper crops, Ancient kitchens between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers were the first to try the process.Before refrigeration there was absolutely no way to stop fermentation. Ripe fruit produced alcohol. It changed to the fermented liquid during the warmer months.It was not just a preservative but a flavoring agent according to Michael Harlan Turkell, a writer and maker of honey vinegars. He is the author of Acid Trip, his 2017 cookbook devoted to all things vinegar. it also formed the base of dipping sauces.Once it made it' leap it persisted into modern times. Like wine it was made in different ways all over the world.Coconut and nipa palms provided sap that could be mixed with water and sap  Saki produced rice vinegar.

Is vinegar hard to make at home? No. At its' most basic it's just fermented wine..It just requires oxygen, bacteria and alcohol.Anyone can start with ready made alcohol, a bottle of wine you had lying around, or even hard cider or saki.Homemade alcohol can be made with fermented fruit such as peaches and water. Enthusiasts also buy pH meters to read acidity, but the only other items necessary are a wide mouthed jar and a cheesecloth for straining. There is also a starter or mother that Amazon sells for around ten dollars. It 's a clear disc of acetobacteria and cellulose that forms naturally on the top of vinegar. Once mastered you can create almost any flavor. Chef Misti Norris of the Dallas pop-up restaurant Petra and the Beast, creates all sorts of acidic concoctions from local mustang grapes mixed with passion fruit, peony flowers and figs Her apartment is full of glass containers and covered oak barrels. she plans on selling them later this year. Other restaurant owners such as Jori Jayne Ende, of  Lady Jayne/s Alchemy and fish  & Game in Chatham, New York uses leftovers from carrots and tomatoes to brown bread and even tomato. and sour cherry.  Her barrels contain everything from pith and seeds to  cores and peels. . They are left to ferment in a wine base to create vinegars that she'll use in a variety of dishes such as snails.

Fermenting is the hottest culinary trend right now. Start with creating a vinegar with any favorite wine or cider. it'll be a nice addition to the kitchen pantry.

Panettonne That Holiday Classic

The classic big boxes are standards right now in supermarkets and gourmet stores right now up until the New Year. They store gold of a sort,  panettones , those delicious buttery breads filled with everything from candied cherries to chocolate chips.Its' complicated recipe is now becoming an obsession with American bakers.

Tejal Rao wrote about this holiday must have in yesterday's New York Times Food section. The recipe was usually the domain of expert Northern Italian bakers , thanks to its' complexity . According to Ms. Rao, it is wildly sensitive , demanding and occassionally infuriating. It is a yeast dough , after all and that is not always easy to deal with in baking.It is a high maintenance dough . The end result should be an airy crumb that can be pulled apart with the ease of pulling apart cotton candy It should be sweet and light ,melting on the tongue.It should be as weightless as cake and have a slight tang like sourdough. Many Italian bakers begin with lieveto madre the starter.Some recipes don;t call for this,Jim Labey of the Sullivan Street Bakery  has a recipe that calls for less sugar which also means no starter . The home baker can just make a simpler version of it called pan d'oro or golden bread. It's essential a panettone without all the  mixing and baking drama.
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Prosperous households made the bread as early as the Medieval Period.. Even back then there was an obssessive amount of attention being paid  to technique and ingredients. Over the years as it became mass produced, it took on the qualities of a mass produced, perfumed sponge. One American baker from San Francisco, Roy Schvartzapel has elevated the recipe after tasting an artesenal one. It has a wispy  texture, melting instantly in his mouth and he recreated it with the help of Italian baker Iginio Massari outside of Milan. He makes small batches of it to sell. Other bakers have tried , some have relegated their doughs to the garbage. Screw up on it and it becomes trash. Everything about the panettone has to be perfect, from the fermentation to the timing, to the temperature, from the emulsion to the starter. Even as something as straightforward as mixing can have pitfalls. Maybe the best bet is taking the slices and turning it into a yummy bread pudding that starts off with toasting the panettone slices  and then covering them with an eggy milk mixture.It's then baked in a aluminum tented pan for forty-five minutes. The end result is a  puffed, golden treat , perfect for a holiday dessert.

Good home bakers should try this Italian treat. It can be a challenge but worth it. If not you can always buy it and turn it into a tasty bread pudding.

Fermenting Frenzy

Mention fermented food and most people ususally grimace. Yet fermentation is one of the more common ways to prepare food and drinks. It's an easy step too that even home chefs can follow. The results are often pretty tasty and a great way to preserve all sorts ot foods.

The process was the subject of the main article in yesterday's New York Times Dining section. The huge piece was written by Dining regular , Jeff Gordinier,Fermentation , he found, is a process using bacteria to basically"cook" food. There is also a cookbook written by Sandor Ellix Katz, The Art of Fermentation by publisher Chelsea Green gives recipes on how to use this prep method to your advantage.There are recipes for the famed Korean kimchi or pickled cabbage along with ones for eggs pickled in soy sauce. Fermentation is making a comeback with some Manhattan chefs, especially the ones at the famed Momufuko.

Fermentation is nothing new, It has been around for centuries,Germans have used it for centuries in the making of sauerkraut. Other, more ancient civilizations such as the Sumerians and the Egyptians used fermented grains to concoct beers. Our earliest ancestors fermented berries to preserve them and to create a heady brew. It makes sense to ferment  because it's a method  of handling a harvest and making it last during the colder months This way his  people can enjoy summer's bounty during a harsh winter. . Fermented foods are also being rediscovered for their health benefits  as well. They  help to stave off everything from breast cancer to heart disease and osteoporosis.

Fermentation is a food process that is beneficial on many levels. It can help preserve foods and make them tasty.It helps in creating .better health but most  of all it's a great way of holding onto summer's bounty.Enjoy favorite veggies in a tasty brine.

The Rebirth Of Mead

Mention mead to anyone and they'll cringe. The drink brings up wince worthy visions of cheesy Renaissance fairs and lame costumes.However this centuries old drink is having a renaissance on its' own. thanks to mead producers and fans.It's not that honey drink served in a plastic cup and eaten with ye olde corn dog.It's a refreshing change to traditional wines, full of the taste of meadows and flowers.

The drink was the subject of an article in yesterday's New York Times Dining section. Michael Sanders, new to the section, interviewed various mead manufacturers. There have been some great innovations in the industry in the last few years. Traditionally the honey has to be boiled and sterilized before it's allowed to ferment with water. Then filtering occurs however this can cause sediment to happen. Most modern mead makers agree that filtering should be nixed to produced a smoother, clearer looking liquid.Another change is the honey being used. Autumn and winter honeys call for alfalfa and barley while  spring and summer ones call for apple blossom. In the past, any honey was used, no matter what time of year it was.

Usually mead has a caramelized honey flavor however now it can be as sere and flinty as an unoaked  Chablis. Some  meads can even taste like prosecco, that fruity, light sparkling Italian white wine. Some can even be as rich as a lush chocolate dessert. Added secondary flavors, such as sage, saffron, fruits and juniper berries are being thrown into its' making to give it complex undertones. There are also mead cocktails where the drink  mixed with other liqueurs. Some bartenders combine  it with apple flavored brandy or cranberry bitters for a fruity play on the traditional.Others blend it wth stronger drinks like mezcal  and this causes the two flavors  to balance  out each other.

Mead is not that cheesy  Renaissance fair staple. It's as complex as any grape based wine and just as flavorful. Try it just to taste a modern approach on a centuries old drink.

Prosecco - The Other Italian Champagne

There’s nothing like a good glass of champagne with a meal. It celebrates not only the event but the taste and flavors of the food before it. Usually most people reach for a good French variety. However the Italians produce an excellent one called Prosecco. This is a dry champagne with not as many bubbles but a lot of flavor.

Prosecco is Italy‘s answer to Dom Perignon. It’s not as sweet tasting as Asti Spumante and is not as overly fizzy as it is either. It has a light lemony taste that is perfect with everything from pasta to risotto , from meat s to fish. It is fermented from Prosecco grapes that have been around since Roman times . In fact Pliny the Elder praise din as the vinum procinum. The name Prosecco came from the town of prosecco, located near Trieste in Italy‘s Northeast corner. However it’s now made in Piedmonte , rivaling Asti Spumanti in production It is cheaper to make thanks to the Chermat method of fermentation. This method allows the wine to go through the second fermentation in pressurized tanks rather than in individual bottles. No turning the bottles every day as in Champagne. The shorter, tank fermentation is preferable for Prosecco because it preserves the freshness and the flavor of the grapes.

Prosecco is more of a summer wine and served with light summer dishes as opposed to heavy pastas. However I had mine the other night with a wonderful dish of artichoke ravioli. It really complimented it and brought out the taste of the sage butter sauce and the artichoke filling itself. However Prosecco is recommended with vegetables so maybe that’s why everything worked. It’s also the main ingredient in a Bellini that wonderful peach cocktail known in Venice. I plan on buying and serving Prosecco this way for holiday brunches,

If you’re looking for a better alternative to Champagne then try Prosecco. Its’ light dry taste will make you an instant fan . It’s the perfect holiday drink this season.

Champagne Wishes

Nothing says celebrate and party time like a good bottle of champagne. It' makes the dullest parties pop. The crisp tastes adds extra flavor to any party food and make sit special. Everyone should have a bottle at the ready during these happy holidays.

Champagne first came about in the mid 1600's a result of a container mishap. It seemed that a second fermentation happened to a type of wine known as vin gris or grey wine. Bubbles appeared and a kind of fizz occurred. Noblemen and wealthy French men fell for this new kind of wine and thus began France's love of champagne. We also have two abbes , the famed Dom Perignon and the lesser known, Frere Jean Oudart who created the first mass production of champagne (named for the region) in their respective monasteries. Two centuries later in 1836, there was a treatise published and research done on how sparkling wine got to be just that. It deals with the amount of extra sugar added or left over. This produces CO2 which is responsible for giving champagne its' sparkle.

Now every winery has their own champagne. What's the best. In my opinion Asti Spumante from Piedmonte (of course I'm prejudiced here.) is the finest. It's light, sweet and doesn't have some of the slightly bitter after taste that other champagnes possess. (another factoid - only sparkling wines produced solely in the Champagne region of France can be classified as champagne. All others have to be called sparkling wines).Asti is the perfect with hors d'ouevres as well as with cakes. There are others such as Freixinet from Spain that are also very good but in a dry white wine kind of way.

This season , remember to be well stocked up on your bottles of bubbly. Buy whatever you like , open a few bottles and toast a fantastic gift or a year well done.