Recipes

I love milk and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

While some health-minded folk may beg to differ, I still believe that milk, and I mean Milk with a capital “m”: full-fat, unpasteurized (raw, alive), and brimming with all its inherent beneficial bacteria and enzymes, is a super-food. (For full milky manifesto, see here).

As raw milk is not only hard to find, but downright criminalized in most of the U.S., you can imagine my excitement when life swept me across the Atlantic to Switzerland – land of the pasture-grazing, mountain-side-roaming, behorned and, sometimes, beflowered cow. And you can imagine my disappointment when I found that, unless you’re living in a dairying village, the most widely accessible dairy foods—including butter and yogurt–have been pasteurized.

And while raw milk isn’t anywhere near illegal here, procuring it does require a bit of inventiveness.

The kind of inventiveness that found Lu & me, three buses and one long walk later, in the possession of a 10-liter plastic bucket filled to its brim with lait cru. You’re probably wondering what would possess two people to purchase such a large quantity of such a perishable foodstuff all at once. Well, quite simply, it was the smallest amount available. So what’s a couple to do when they want the benefits of raw milk in their lives but only have access to an impossible amount? Make raw-milk yogurt, of course!

Without pasteurization, the shelf life of a glass of milk is short—3-4 days, tops. This explains why, traditionally, dairy consumption revolved, not around fresh glass with cookies, but ferments: cultured butters, moldy cheeses, effervescent kefir, creamy yogurt, to name a few.

My first experience with homemade yogurt was, incidentally, in Greece. The process is simple: heat milk, add bacterial culture (or spoonful of bacteria-rich yogurt or starter) and let ferment in an incubator (or wrapped in sweaters or towels as pictured) for four-eight hours. Our notion of yogurt is much thicker, much firmer than, for example, than the dahi of India because we heat our milk past the point of pasteurization in the process. While this produces a denser, creamier product, it also destroys all the raw-some qualities of the milk.

It’s possible to make yogurt with milk that is still, technically, raw. Raw-milk yogurt’s consistency is somewhere between drinkable and eatable. We’ve been spreading ours on pancakes, making bircher muesli (overnight oats), and pouring it in mugs over a spoonful of turmeric and honey. It will keep in your fridge for weeks if well-sealed.

Raw-Milk Yogurt

#1. Heat milk to 110-115F. If you don’t have a kitchen thermometer, this is roughly halfway to boiling. (The milk should be warm, not at all hot).

Make sure to constantly stir, as any scorching at the bottom will affect the consistency of your yogurt.

#2. While milk is heating, sterilize glass jars by pouring boiling water into them.

Let water sit in the jars until milk is ready for transfer, as you want them to be warm for best fermentation results.

#3. Pour milk into warmed jars, leaving a bit of room at the top. Add spoonful of yogurt from either a yogurt starter or a commercially produced yogurt with live-bacteria cultures and stir.

If you’re using bacteria from a commercially produced yogurt, you will have to continue to do so every time you make yogurt (meaning, you can’t just use a spoonful from your last batch). If you’re able to find a starter, you’ll be able to use last batch spoons every time.

#4. Seal and wrap in sweaters or towels or use an incubator, if you have one (fancy!). Place near a heater.

#5. Ferment from 4-8 hours. Experiment with the time! Some recipes call for ferments as long as 24-hours. I usually let it ferment overnight.

#6. You just made yogurt! Enjoy! Or:

If you’d like your yogurt to be a bit thicker, and if you’d like some whey (for, perhaps, some lacto-fermented veggies) you can strain your yogurt.
Line a bowl with some cheesecloth and pour your yogurt into the cloth. Fasten cloth and let hang over an empty bowl for two or so hours. Voila: thicker yogurt!
The contents in your bowl are whey—you can store this in your fridge for up to a week and in the freezer for three months.

I had my first Suisse pot-au-feu last February while tucked away in the snowy mountains. This was the traditional version, with beef, bones and vegetables slowly simmered on the stove, carrots and leeks ladled from the broth then salted and slathered with grainy mustard, broth and tender meat sopped up with, not fork, but hunk of crusty bread. It was just the kind of cheek-flushing, sweater-no-longer-necessary, deeply-warming meal that the (witch) doctor ordered.

Pot-au-feu, or literally pot-over-fire, can be said to be France’s national dish. Recipes for pot-au-feu are as various as the country’s regions, the families living in those regions. The main point of pot-au-feu, from my vantage, is to gather honey from a weed: a low-cost (read: tough) cut of meat, some bones, some vegetables, a few sprigs of something green all turned tender, transcendently so, with the aid of heat and time. The perfect meal for the first truly cold early winter Sunday with an extra-special bonus for une femme comme moi.

Isn’t it Iron-ic?

I’ve said before that L & I really only eat meat once or twice a week, but this all changes for me during, borrowing my Ethnobotany professor’s line, my moon-time. (For the more literal friends and/or the men among us, I mean menstruation. Yep, just said menstruation on the internet. Girl power!) Us moon-timing women require 18mg of iron per day, as we’re losing 30-40mg of iron each month during our cycle. Iron is one of the most difficult minerals to absorb and, although iron absorption increases with increased need, it takes several months to completely replenish iron concentration in the blood so it’s important to keep levels consistent. (Haas, 188)

Iron is actually a micro-mineral, or an essential trace mineral, yet it receives way more attention than some of the big gun macro-minerals like sulfur. This speaks to two things: the first being just how important iron’s role is in our health. Iron helps to form hemoglobin. Hemoglobin carries oxygen molecules throughout our body. Red blood cells pick up oxygen from our lungs and distribute it to the rest of our tissues, all of which need oxygen to survive. To put it concisely: If we lack iron, we lack hemoglobin and therefore our tissues lack oxygen. More concisely: no iron, no energy. Even more: no Fe = no Fun. The second thing: although iron exists in many food sources it’s also damn difficult to absorb, and not just for us moon-timers.

Heme vs. Nonheme

Two forms of iron exist: heme and nonheme or, simply, animal and vegetable. Heme is found only in animal foods–it’s highest in liver and beef–and is the most easily absorbed and utilized form of iron. Nonheme is found in vegetable sources–like spinach and pumpkin seeds–and, as even my vegetarian-leaning nutrition book admits, is quite poorly absorbed and utilized by our bodies. (Haas, 188)

To further complicate matters for the herbivores amongst us, the highest sources of nonheme iron–whole grains and dark leafies like spinach and chard–contain certain compounds–phytates and oxalates respectively–that actually bind to iron, inhibiting its uptake and making it even less easy to absorb. Further still, soy, a common source of protein in many a vegetarian’s diet, has been shown to decrease iron absorption.

Absorbing it All

You can see now that the main concern with iron is absorption. The bad news is that there are other factors negatively affecting this besides the aforementioned ones. These include caffeine and tannic acid in coffee and tea, phosphates in industrial meats and soft drinks, antacids and the less easily remedied low stomach acid and fast gastrointestinal motility.

The good news is there are a few ways to positively affect iron absorption as well. Vitamin C (sauerkraut with pot-au-feu!), the use of iron cookware (cast-iron dutch-oven for pot-au-feu!), and the combination of heme and nonheme sources (a kale salad with a heap-load of seeds with your pot-au-feu!).

Before I get to the recipe, I’d like to quickly discuss supplementation. Elements of inorganic iron–such as those used to supplement refined flour–are dubious. In that form, iron can’t be utilized by the body and its build-up in blood and tissues is toxic. Elevated amounts have been linked to heart disease and cancer. (Fallon, 44) If supplementing, it’s best to use a supplement derived from whole foods rather than one synthesized in a lab.

Dimanche Roast: Pot-au-Feu

Ingredients

1 pound beef shoulder or brisket
2 pieces of oxtail or marrow bones
2 medium-sized yellow onions
handful of carrots
handful of turnips
1 leek
two handfuls of new potatoes
5 cloves garlic
bouquet garni with sage, rosemary and thyme
salt and pepper
knob ghee

Directions

Heat oven to 200F. Lightly rub your cut of beef with salt and pepper. Heat cast-iron dutch-oven on stove-top and add knob of ghee. Once dutch-oven is hot, sear beef on each side for 1 minute or so. Remove from heat immediately.
Place oxtail or marrow bones in dutch-oven with beef. Cover and place into oven.
While your meat is roasting, prepare your vegetables, roughly chopping them so they are more or less the same size. The turnips and potatoes we used were small, so we just chopped them in half. You can peel your vegetables, or not. Leave garlic whole. Prepare your bouquet garni by tying a few sprigs of thyme, rosemary and sage together with string.
After your meat has roasted on its own for about an hour, add vegetables and bouquet garni to dutch-oven. Keep roasting for another hour-and-a-half, checking on meat to see if it's tender.

Serve with grainy mustard, pickled things and a hunk of crusty bread (to spread your roasted bone-marrow on).

References:
Haas, Elson M, 1992, 2006. Staying Health with Nutrition. Berkeley, Celestial Arts.
Fallon, Sally, 1999, 2001. Nourishing Traditions. Washington, DC. Newstrends Publishing Inc.

The Soaked Bean

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Raw-Milk Yogurt

Dimanche Roast: Pot-au-Feu