Gettin' Kulcha

Yep, things are a bit slow in our soul food kitchen today. A great time to make butter. It’s more or less a two-day affair. Hey, acquiring culture takes time. And time, right now, I got.

I actually like these downtimes in the kitchen. A chance to get my inventory in order. Time to make sure everything is spick and span. A chance to get a bit more deliberative about some technique or other. At the moment, I’m waiting for my cream to cool down to about 110F/40 C, before mixing in the yoghurt culture and storing in a warm place for the next 36 hours. Then comes the blending in the food processor, followed by sieving the mix into butter and cultured cream (ie buttermilk), and chilling.

There is something intensely gratifying about something that is not instant gratification. Take this cooling down period right now. It always amazes me how fast we can bring something like cream to a boiling point but how long it takes to cool that same cream down again. Food, as they say, for thought.

Or, how about the relatively long span of time it takes for the mixture of cream and culture to curdle and become somewhat sour? It literally does not happen over night. But when it does, the organic chemistry changes, indelibly.

Or, how about the process of sieving, where the mix is separated into something sweet and dense (butter and something sour/tangy and more liquidy? An interesting aspect of compartmentalization that strikes me as very southern (we show our sweet, dense side of ourselves to the outside public, saving the tangier aspect of ourselves to those who know us better.)

I’ve probably butchered this metaphor about as much as anyone could tolerate. Chalk it up to too much time on my hands.