Milk (34 page)
Authors: Anne Mendelson
If you are using a fresh mango, detach the flesh from skin and pit as follows: Hold the mango upright on a work surface, narrow edge facing you and the flat and rounded sides to your right and left. With a small sharp knife, slice vertically down through both flat and rounded sides so as to just miss the flat pit. Skin side down, score each of the cut halves into ¾-inch dice. Push from the skin side to open up the scored side; slide the knife blade under the flesh to detach from the skin. Slice away as much of the remaining flesh as you can from around the pit and cut into small dice. If using frozen mango pulp, simply thaw to refrigerator temperature.
Place the yogurt, mango flesh or thawed pulp, lime juice, salt, and ice in a blender or food processor; process until the ice is slushy and the mixture is frothy and well combined. Taste for flavor and sweetness. It should need no sugar unless you have a rather insipid mango; if necessary add a teaspoon or two of superfine sugar and process to blend. If it seems a little bland, add another jolt of fresh citrus juice and/or salt. If it is too thick for your taste, dilute with a little ice water. Serve at once in tall glasses, garnished with the optional mint.
I
f I had the power to dictate the next all-the-rage ingredient, my first nominee might well be tarhana or one of its many cousins—trahana,
kishk, kashk,
and more. By whatever name, they belong to a large, amorphous family of staple foods that has no good general label. In
Mediterranean Grains and Greens,
Paula Wolfert—who along with
Diane Kochilas has done much to publicize these treasures—suggested “rustic pasta.” I lean toward “proto-pasta,” because tarhana and the rest of the clan undoubtedly existed before any other sort of pasta in the regions that were the cradle of both cereal-growing and dairying. All consist of wheat (or occasionally barley) in some form—crushed, cracked, ground, or as cooked whole berries—combined with a liquid element like milk, then dried enough to be reduced to pellets, granules, or morsels. Once dried and kept dry, they last forever without refrigeration.
If you were to catalogue every variety that exists on earth, the list would stretch from egg barley and Pennsylvania Dutch
rivvels
to Sardinian
fregola
and the many forms of couscous. But probably the oldest members (and for me, the shining lights) of the family are kinds found from the
Balkans far into the Middle East that are made with soured milk, buttermilk, or
yogurt, particularly from goats’ or sheep’s milk. The interplay between tart milk and grain flavor has to be tasted to be understood.
The most varied and complex of the soured proto-pastas were developed in Turkey, where their collective name is “tarhana,” and Greece, where they are called “trahana” or
xinohondros
(“sour cracked wheat,” a Cretan specialty). The simplest kinds consist of nothing but flour and yogurt or soured milk, partly dried and crushed or crumbled to the texture of coarse flour or fine meal. The most elaborate ones are slowly fermented, sometimes with the aid of yeast, and use a battery of other ingredients that may include sweet and hot peppers, tomatoes, and chickpeas, with or without herbs and spices. Some kinds are made into coarse, rough-textured
crumbs, some into bite-sized pieces. There are versions with sour fruit like pomegranate or quince. Every village, indeed every family, used to have its own variation. A version even came to
Hungary as
tarhonya,
though today the name usually applies to a form of egg barley made without yogurt.
The long drying period produces a vividly fused concentration of all the original flavors together. Unfortunately, the drying step will be the chief logistical problem for many people seeking to duplicate this marvelous specialty in the United States. In Anatolia and Greece, the year’s supply was traditionally made from combined sheep’s and goats’ milk in late summer, when lactation was starting to wind down (resulting in scantier but richer milk) and fiercely hot, dry sunlight prevailed everywhere. Those of us in areas of high humidity can expect the drying process to take a day or several days longer than can people in Arizona. Depending on how stubborn it’s being, you may want to finish it off in a home dehydrator. Some cooks suggest an oven at lowest setting, but I don’t recommend this unless you can reliably keep the temperature below 150°F.
The chief use of tarhana/trahana (which is “kishk” or “kashk” in most of the non-Turkish Middle East) is as a kind of porridge, or a soup base or thickener. It also goes into some wonderful fillings for savory pies or stuffed vegetables. Making it from scratch is undeniably the sort of extended project that people either are or aren’t game for, like homemade pasta or sourdough bread. Come to think of it, sour-milk tarhana is not unlike a combination of the two, since sourdough is also a product of
lactic-acid fermentation.
I have successfully made Turkish-style tarhana at home from a recipe in
Özcan Ozan’s excellent
The Sultan’s Kitchen.
I recommend his version to anyone who wants to master this incredibly labor-intensive—but also incredibly good—staple of Turkish cuisine; otherwise, there are several good
commercial brands. For most cooks, the recipe for
Greek-style Sour Trahana
will be a more practical undertaking.
I suggest trying a commercial Greek brand before deciding whether to embark on the adventure yourself. Look for the pebbly-textured Vlaha or Krinos brands of trahana labeled “sour” or “xinos,” meaning that it was made from
milk in soured form. (If it says “sweet” or “glykos,” it was made from unsoured milk—perfectly okay, but not as interesting as the other.) The best, though unfortunately scarcest, imported trahana I know—the coarse-textured Pittas brand—comes from Cyprus and consists of cracked wheat and sheep’s-milk yogurt formed into pieces about the size and shape of Tootsie Rolls.
Tarhana imported from Turkey is often very sharp-flavored, from the complex mixture of vegetables and seasonings worked into the original ferment and left to ripen over a long period. Baktat, Coskun, and Sera are the most common commercial brands here. They are finer than most Greek trahana, a gritty powder with a strong pink or orange-red tinge from red peppers and tomatoes.
In Turkey and Greece, people regularly eat tarhana/trahana as a breakfast porridge. This is one of the most forgiving and foolproof dishes in existence. Allowing roughly ¼ cup of dried cereal per serving, you stir it into about four to six times its volume of boiling water and cook it, stirring occasionally, over medium-low heat until the water is absorbed and you have a thick, well-softened mush or porridge. The time will usually be between 15 and 30 minutes. If the water starts boiling off before the grain is tender, simply add more water and cook longer. If you’ve inadvertently used too much water, turn up the heat to evaporate it faster. Or if you decide you’d like to try it in a soupy condition, that’s fine, too. Serve it with butter, creamy yogurt, crumbled feta or grated Parmesan cheese, or any desired fresh herb. And note that the Greek kinds—especially those using bulgur—make an excellent lunch or dinner side dish for grain fanciers.
Tarhana/trahana is often briefly soaked in water before being brought to a boil, to shorten the cooking time. Another variation is to cook it pilaf-style, briefly sautéing the cereal in butter or olive oil (sometimes along with chopped onions or garlic) before adding liquid—stock instead of water, if you want a rich man’s version of what is in its origins an exceedingly thrifty dish. By all means experiment with tarhana/trahana to thicken and enrich soups or stews; see the recipe for
Turkish Tarhana Soup
.
The most exciting array of recipes using trahana that I have
seen—far surpassing my few suggestions—is presented by
Diane Kochilas in
The Glorious Foods of Greece.
T
his is a several days’ project, though it involves very little real work. It makes a coarse-textured trahana that will be a hit with bulgur fans. My version is modeled on a recipe in
Aglaia Kremezi’s
The Foods of Greece
—or was; over time it’s wandered some distance from the original. As noted above, the drying process may stretch out quite a while.
YIELD:
About 2 ½ pounds (7 cups)
2 cups milk, preferably goats’ milk
2 cups rich, creamy plain yogurt, preferably Greek goats’- and sheep’s-milk yogurt
About 4 cups coarse bulgur
About ⅔ cup fine semolina
1 heaping tablespoon salt
2 to 4 tablespoons olive oil (optional)
Flour or more oil for handling the dough
Bring the milk nearly to a boil, and cool to room temperature. Stir in the yogurt, and let stand overnight in a warm room, loosely covered.
Pour the soured milk into a large saucepan with the bulgur and semolina. Mix everything together and set the pan over low heat, stirring, for several minutes. The goal is only to soften the bulgur enough so that it will absorb the liquid. Different batches will vary quite a lot in absorption capacity. You want a dough about the consistency of a dense meatloaf mixture. If it is much thicker than that, thin it with a little water; if it’s loose and runny, add some more bulgur or semolina. Work in the salt and oil (oil isn’t absolutely necessary, but it helps the dough cohere).
Let the sticky, pebbly-textured dough cool until you can handle it. Scoop out handfuls the size of medium meatballs and flatten them into patties, occasionally moistening your hands with oil or dusting them with flour to keep from sticking. Set the patties on parchment paper spread on a tabletop or
cookie sheet. Let stand, turning several times a day, for two to three days, or until bone-dry. In weather too damp for complete drying, the final stages can be accomplished in a home dehydrator on the lowest possible setting.
Break and crumble the patties to coarse crumbs until the largest lumps are no bigger than a raisin. Store at room temperature in a glass jar or jars.
SOUP I AND II
T
arhana in a soup acts as both flavor agent and thickener. The thickening effect, of course, comes from flour—but flour magically transformed by having been set to ferment as a dough in the company of yogurt and vegetables. A tarhana-thickened soup is not floury but somehow rustic, suave, and fortifying at the same time.
Tarhana soup is so familiar to Turkish cooks that recipes are scarcely necessary. “Dissolve some dried tarhana in some simmering water” is the gist of it. “Water or broth” is one way of enlarging the possibilities, but there are dozens more. Preferred ratios of tarhana to liquid range from about 1:4 (very thick) to 1:8 (thin).
Tarhana soup makes a great breakfast or lunch, and is a splendid main-dish soup for an otherwise light supper. The following two recipes—one minimalist, one a little more fleshed out—are only rough outlines of something that defies exact formulas.
