Milk (23 page)

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Peel the potatoes and onion and cut into very thin slices. Butter a 2-quart
baking dish, preferably wider than deep, and arrange a layer of potato slices over the bottom. Dust with a little of the flour. Scatter a little of the onion and optional ham over the potatoes; season plentifully with salt, pepper, and the optional parsley and dot with bits of butter. Add another layer of potatoes and continue in the same way, finishing with a layer of potatoes and any remaining butter. Pour enough milk over the potatoes to nearly but not quite cover them; the amount needed will vary with the shape of the baking dish.

Bake, tightly covered with a lid or several layers of aluminum foil, for 40 to 45 minutes. Remove the cover and bake another 35 to 40 minutes, until the milk is nearly absorbed. Let stand for 5 to 10 minutes before serving.

F
ans of creamed spinach are legion, but they all seem to understand something different by the term, from a little spinach in a lot of white sauce to a lot of spinach with a little reduced cream. Neither of these exactly takes my fancy. I think that for many spinach lovers the following recipe by the great twentieth-century French cookbook-writer E. Saint-Ange will come as a revelation. The main thing that sets it apart from other versions good, bad, or indifferent is adding plenty of butter to the hot spinach
at the last minute
so that it has no time to lose its just-melted suavity.

This is my general take on the sturdy classic with measurements given in standard American units. Experienced cooks will understand that before cooking, the spinach should be rinsed and lightly shaken to remove excess moisture, and that today’s equivalent of pushing a pan to the corner of an old-fashioned range is putting it on a burner over very low heat. The ever-methodical Madame Saint-Ange notes, “The cream used here can be replaced by the same amount of milk, reduced by half,” and gives estimated total preparation time as “one and a quarter hours, including all prior preparations.”

(For anyone interested in further pursuing the acquaintance of
La Bonne Cuisine de Madame Saint-Ange
I recommend Paul Aratow’s complete translation.)

YIELD:
7 to 8 servings

Put about 1 tablespoon of the butter in a medium-size “sauteuse” pan; add the spinach and wilt on high heat, stirring it, for 4 or 5 minutes.

Remove from the heat. Season with: a good pinch of salt; the pinch of granulated sugar; a small pinch of pepper and grated nutmeg. Dust with the flour, mix well, and stir again on the heat for just 2 minutes.

Now add the cream, little by little, and
off the heat.
Next let it come to the boil, stirring continually. Then remove the pan to the corner of the stove. Cover and let it gently simmer for
20 to 30 minutes.
This part of the cooking can also be done in the oven: in that case, place a round of buttered [parchment] paper over the spinach under the lid. Just a few seconds before serving, add to the spinach what you have left of the butter, by small bits. From that moment do not let boil. If the spinach has to wait a little while, it would be best to put off adding the butter, and not to do this until the very [last] moment: otherwise it loses its creamy effect.

[Once the spinach is arranged in a serving dish, Madame Saint-Ange suggests garnishing it with small triangular butter-fried croutons or sprinkling it with 5 to 6 tablespoons of hot cream, seasoned with a small pinch of fine salt.]

T
he popular idea that the Chinese have always shunned milk products is quite inaccurate. So is the notion that lactose
intolerance accounts for the very widespread modern Chinese dislike of milk, butter, and any dairy product that doesn’t come out of a can. The French historian
Françoise Sabban exposed these mistakes more than twenty years ago. As she shows, descriptions of milking practices, dairy products, and the use of milk in cooking are routinely found in many sources, including agricultural and culinary treatises from the sixth to the eighteenth century.

Why the dominant Han Chinese ethnic population eventually developed an aversion to the mere idea of tasting milk or butter, and why the use of these foods became almost entirely limited to a few ethnic minorities in the Mongol or Uighur outposts of the empire, are among the great puzzles of history. Certainly the use of cows’ milk today is a piece of Westernization that has penetrated very unevenly into Chinese society. But in recent times an intriguing dish called “fried milk” has achieved currency in some of the areas most deeply affected by European contact, chiefly in Kwangtung (Canton) province and Hong Kong. It should not be confused with another local dish of the same name, a dessert made out of a superthick, starchy milk-based custard cut into squares or diamonds and then deep-fried in a batter coating in the same way as its probable inspiration, the Portuguese
leite frito.

The second or savory kind of “fried milk” slightly resembles
fu yung,
at least the very delicate versions that use only egg whites. It, too, could be described as a custard, but a lightly set savory one made with a combination of milk, egg whites, and a little cornstarch, all stir-fried to the texture of scrambled eggs. When I’ve had it in Chinatown restaurants, it usually contains crab or shrimp and sometimes is served on a bed of fried cellophane noodles or rice sticks. Browned pine nuts are the usual garnish.

This version of fried milk is great as part of a simple Chinese dinner menu. I’ve also found that people who won’t touch egg yolks with a ten-foot pole like it as a breakfast or brunch dish—especially with the vegetarian substitutions suggested below. It’s a useful recipe to know about when you’re wondering what to do with a bunch of egg whites after making something like lemon curd or Hollandaise sauce.

I first came across the dish in
Ken Hom’s fascinating book
Fragrant
Harbor Taste,
a tribute to the food of Hong Kong, and have followed his recipe for many years with only minor deviations. Hom suggests a combination of fresh and canned evaporated milk. I’ve also had good results with all fresh milk. Experiment with the recipe to your liking; it seems to work equally well with larger or smaller proportions of milk, egg white, starch, and seafood or meat.

YIELD:
5 to 6 servings

Mix the cornstarch and salt to a smooth paste with a few tablespoons of the milk. Add the remaining milk and egg whites and use a whisk to stir—
not
whip—the mixture until well combined but not quite perfectly blended. Stir in the crabmeat (or shrimp) and ham.

Toast the pine nuts in a small dry skillet, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned. Scoop them out into a bowl before they can scorch.

Heat the oil in a wok over medium-high heat. When it is not quite smoking, pour in the milk–egg white mixture and begin to stir-fry, scooping and scrambling with a spatula (preferably a wok spatula). At first it will be thin and soupy; after a couple of minutes you will notice some thickening on the bottom. Reduce the heat to low and continue to stir-fry for a few minutes longer, until the milk custard has the consistency of scrambled eggs. (Total cooking time is usually about 5 to 6 minutes.) Toward the end it will take on a cheesy consistency and “break,” giving up a lot of liquid. Now pour the contents of the wok into a mesh strainer set over a bowl to let the watery part drain off before turning the “fried milk” out into a serving dish. Serve at once, garnished with the toasted pine nuts and a handful of cilantro leaves.

VARIATIONS:
You can replace the shellfish and ham with a few ounces of cooked chicken breast, diced or shredded. For a vegetarian version, eliminate
the shellfish and ham and substitute a dozen or so dried shiitake mushrooms (soaked in hot water, drained, and coarsely chopped) along with a large handful of scallions or Chinese chives (trimmed and coarsely chopped), slender asparagus tips (blanched or briefly stir-fried), or seeded chopped tomatoes.

R
ice puddings exist around the globe in boiled, baked, steamed, and other forms that range from nursery to banquet fare (say, from German
Milchreis
to French
riz à l’impératrice
). We in the West are most familiar with puddings based on whole rice, such as Spanish or Latin American
arroz con leche,
Norwegian
riskrem,
and the eggy kind at American delicatessen counters. But where rice puddings reach even greater glory, from Turkey to India, they are often made with rice flour. This is entirely understandable, since the essence of rice pudding is the alchemy that takes place between the sweetened milk and the starchy or floury part of the rice grain. (The same is true in parts of Southeast Asia where the “milk” in question is coconut milk.)

Of the European- and American-style rice puddings, I always unhesitatingly opt for members of the stovetop branch made without eggs. (Or for that matter, without raisins—I like to put raisins plumped in hot water and a little Scotch
on
the finished pudding, not
in
it.) Nothing is wrong with baked egg-enriched rice puddings, but to me they lack the clean elegance of the ones simmered in a saucepan.

The long-grain rice of American supermarkets can be used in a pinch but really is not starchy enough to suit the purpose. The kinds I recommend are called “short-grain” by some people, “medium-grain” by others, and—just to complete the confusion—“round-grain” by many British pudding lovers. They are starchy, but not as starchy as the varieties used for risotto (arborio,
vialone nano,
etc.). My favorite is
baldo
rice, which is grown in Italy largely for the Turkish market and shows up in Turkish and Greek groceries. I’ve also had good results with a kind widely sold in Hispanic markets under names like “Valencia” (which it is not) or “Valencia-type.”

The reason for fussing over the choice of rice is that you want it to gradually release a certain amount of starch in cooking—just enough to bind the mass of softened grains in a velvety matrix that conveys a sense of creaminess even when you use skim milk. The
other important thing to realize is that as regards the amount of rice you’re using in proportion to liquid, less is more. It’s astonishing how little rice you need for the most beautiful effect. When you use too much, somehow the lovely puddingy consistency never develops to the full and the milk can’t really blossom in your mouth. Some old-fashioned recipes used to specify a few tablespoons of rice to a quart of milk. Other versions, like mine, use both water (for precooking the rice) and milk (for completing the cooking).

The best rice pudding I ever made was a happy accident using the leftover milk from a batch of
clotted cream
.

YIELD:
About 5 to 6 servings

Put the rice and water in a heavy-bottomed 1½- or 2-quart saucepan, bring to a boil, and cook tightly covered over very low heat for 15 minutes. Don’t worry if not all the water is absorbed in that time.

Add the milk and remaining ingredients, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Bring it to a boil, and simmer over medium heat for 45 to 50 minutes, stirring frequently. After about 15 minutes fish out the vanilla bean, slit it lengthwise with a small sharp knife, and scrape out the contents. Return the vanilla bean and seeds to the milk, which will still be very thin. It should begin to thicken slightly in another 15 to 20 minutes. Keep stirring vigilantly as more of the starch dissolves out. The pudding is done when it has a creamy, full-bodied texture.

Remove the vanilla bean, lemon peel, and cinnamon stick (if using). Rice pudding can be served warm, but I prefer to let it cool to room temperature before transferring it to a bowl and chilling thoroughly. Some people dislike having any skin form on top and try to prevent this by pressing plastic wrap directly over the surface. I simply stir it back in a few times and don’t worry if a little more re-forms.