The wonders of the kefir grain explored.

My temporary landlord Russell Busch, who is also a good friend, just introduced me to kefir making. Kefir is a fermented milk drink that contains plenty of healthy probiotics. To make kefir from milk you need kefir grains which are a live and active culture of yeast and bacteria.

Kefir is a very common drink in Eastern Europe and the Nordic countries. I grew up with it and if I remember correctly, the Swedish kefir is thicker, more sour and has a slightly carbonated feel to it. Swedes often eat kefir (with a spoon) together with muesli, cornflakes, fruit or just with sugar and cinnamon. I like my kefir best just plain with fresh fruit or berries. Others prefer making smoothies with frozen berries and fruits as it takes off some of the strong sour flavor. Luckily Kefir has become increasingly common here in the U.S.

The kefir making process is super easy and you don’t really need to do much as the kefir grains do most of the work.

To make kefir you will need:

• kefir grains (which you order online here or here or somewhere else)
• organic whole milk from cow, sheep or goat
• glass jar
• small piece of cheese cloth + rubber band (or similar)
• wood or plastic spoon/ spatula
• fine mesh plastic strainer (or stainless steel)

Note: no metal such as aluminum etc can be used as it will react with the kefir grains. Although, for some reason stainless steel seems to be OK.

Place the new kefir grains in a clean glass jar (about two tablespoons). Pour about 1 cup organic whole milk over the grains. Cover with the cheesecloth and fasten it with a rubber band (I actually just use a plastic lid that is just placed on top). Leave the jar on the counter in room temperature away from any sun.

When the kefir has gotten thicker it is probably done. It should smell pleasantly and have a mild sour taste. At this stage you will have a drinkable kefir. If it stays longer the kefir will start to separate the curdled milk from the whey. Don’t worry, the kefir is still fine, however it will be slightly thicker and have a richer taste. A longer fermentation will also create more probiotics and less lactose. The fermentation will take about 12-36 hours.

When you think you are ready, give the jar a shake and drain it through the plastic strainer to separate the kefir from the grains. It’s important to be gentle with the grains so don’t press them too hard. The kefir grains don’t have to be totally clean from curds for the next batch. The ready-made kefir can be stored in the fridge, preferably in a glass container. It will keep fresh for awhile. If you think the kefir is too loose you can strain it to reduce some of the whey. Leftover whey can be used for many things (see below).

Next Batch
Prepare the next batch by placing the strained kefir grains into a clean glass jar. This time you should add a little more milk and the fermenting process will probably go faster as the grains have grown larger and become more active.

The more kefir you make the bigger the grains will grow, you will therefore need to adjust the amount of milk depending on their size. At some point you need to split the grains up as there is a limit on how much kefir you can make. I suggest giving some grains to a friend or start making other things with it. You can, for example, make kefir drinks by using almond, soy or coconut milk instead of regular milk. In this kind of process the grains will not grow and therefore not last as long. I haven’t tried it yet but my landlord makes coconut kefir drinks daily.

What To Do With The Kefir
There are many other things you can do with the kefir if you don’t just want to drink or eat it. Kefir is excellent in dips, dressings, cakes and bread. It can also be used instead of yeast when baking bread.

Recently I made my own cream cheese or rather fresh cheese by straining the kefir from the whey through a clean kitchen towel or several layers of cheese cloth (takes about 24 hours). This creamy cheese can be served plain or flavored with fresh herbs, garlic or anything you like. It’s also great to make pierogi leniwe (Polish lazy pierogi).

You can do many things with the whey such as ferment vegetables, sauerkraut (cabbage) and when diluted 5 times with water it can be used as a fertilizer for your plants. For about a week I collected the leftover whey to make ricotta. I was amazed how well it worked out as the whey just looks like cloudy water.

Storing The Kefir Grains
At some point you may want to have a break in your kefir making and it’s actually possible to store the kefir grains with some milk in your fridge. Just feed them with new fresh milk every now and again. When you start again the grains may not be as active as before the break, so you probably have to start again with just a small amount of milk.

Illustrations by Johanna Kindvall

The post Recipe: Make Your own Kefir Like a True Swede appeared first on EcoSalon.

A gourmet slow food paradise in the Smoky Mountains.

In the misty foothills of eastern Tennessee’s Smoky Mountains, Blackberry Farm is a delightful and unusual hotel offering a gastro-luxe farm-to-table experience, with southern hospitality.

This being Earth Month, we’ve been reflecting on various ways we’re bringing nature into our homes, for example with micro-sized sexy urban gardens. This rural hotel/farm is at the other end of that scale, a vast 4,200 acre estate with a range of animals including sheep, which produce milk (for cheese), wool and meat; pigs, for sausages and pork; and hens (free-range, naturally), for their eggs. The animals also regenerate the pasture, fertilize, control pests and consume waste products from the farm’s food production.

The gardeners produce heirloom varieties (organically developed over generations, un-genetically-modified) of fruit and vegetables, such as apples, beans and carrots, while wild mushrooms are foraged from the woodlands. They even have black truffles – perfect with fresh eggs for breakfast.

Foodies will truly find heaven, care of the artisans of the farmstead as well as the gardeners. The farm has its own bee-keeper, for instance, and cheese-maker, butcher, plus a preservationist who makes jams, pickles and preserves. There’s a cooking school with celebrity chef guests, as well as a packed program of other food and wine events.

Accommodation is either in a beautiful private house and cottages, or guestrooms in the guesthouse: all is comfortable and classic, with four-poster beds, low-key prints or chintz in muted tones. All rooms and houses have fireplaces, high-speed internet, and integrated surround-sound systems. As well as the outdoor pool, with mountain views, there’s the spa with a wet treatment room offering the latest technology, such as various high-pressure water therapies; yoga classes are also available. Croquet, wildflower hikes and horse-and-carriage rides are other low-impact activities designed to get you in tune with nature, without harming it.

Rates from $345 excluding tax (two night minimum).

Photos: Blackberry Farm

Places & Spaces is a travel guide that will inspire you to carve out a vacation on your calendar. All of the gorgeous locations and accommodations in our guide share our concern for the environment. From tent glamping to lavish built environments, fair warning, you’ll feel compelled to pack your suitcase.

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A weekly roundup of EcoSalon’s top stories.

Just when you thought you might be destined to only meet men at dark, dingy bars that reek of Pabst Blue Ribbon, sex columnist Abigail Wick gives them the special sauce in her article Sex by Numbers: 5 Ways Yoga Can Keep Men Out of Bars. Her advice? Take a yoga class and become one with a healthy woman in a bamboo-floored room with Krishna music and temple bells. Dirty dogs can learn new tricks.

The fashion industry is one of the most wasteful cogs on the planet, yet we love it and buy clothes like, well, they’re going out of style. Can we learn to be conscious consumers? Can we fine tune a fashion program for ourselves that isn’t so wasteful? We are in agreement with writer Abigail Doan in Upping the Ante on the Ethical Fashion Frontier that the next step in ethical fashion just might start with being aware of the genius of place. We also put a whole hell of a lot of faith in you as a consumer that you can change – can you?

Even foodies are scared of things; not arugula or bok choy but bigger things like measuring tools. Anna Brones, our fearless food columnist for Foodie Underground, decides to throw care to the wind and take a cheese making class with a friend that requires her to do just that – pull out a measuring cup. Turns out kitchen tools can be fun in Foodie Underground: Fresh Cheese 101.

If you’ve ever had a sleeping partner with a dog or cat that sleeps with them, you may have been repulsed, annoyed, or thought less of them after the “sleeping” was over. I mean really, when the pet keeps you up all night, isn’t that a behavior problem you want to nip in the bud? Get a life and teach your pet they have their own place to sleep taking notes all the while reading Eco Luxe for Four Legged Furry People. Don’t worry, they’ll still be comfortable without your unshaven leg on them.

What have we learned about shopping from this recession? Our global economy has taken a beating and consumers everywhere are changing their buying habits which alters everything worldwide. We are more frugal, cautious and conscious, which makes sense when you realize how loose we’ve been for so long. Maybe we all forgot mom telling us there were kids starving in other countries and not to waste a thing – so we made the most of what we had. In No Easy Sell: 6 Traits of the Post-Recession Consumer, we get to suck up the fact that mom’s metaphor for not wasting was spot on.

The post The Friday 5: Old Dogs, New Tricks Edition appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnTurns out, making your own cheese is easier than you can imagine.

Before you start reading the rest of this column, maybe I should clarify what kind of foodie I am.

Yes, I like to cook. Yes, I like to throw dinner parties. Yes, I spend a large part of my budget on food. Yes, I pretentiously pronounce any French culinary item with a French accent. But when it comes down to it, in the kitchen, I am incredibly low maintenance.

I rarely follow recipes, I don’t measure and I have never cooked anything that requires a thermometer. I only made clarified butter for the first time last year. If it’s too complicated I won’t touch it, because in my mind, food should be approachable; able to be enjoyed by everyone.

This could be why I’ve never taken an official cooking class. There was that time in Thailand where I learned how to make curry and pad thai in a balmy open air kitchen of Chang Mai, but that’s just what you do in Thailand. Culinary classes on home turf? Never.

Fortunately I have a good friend Sarah who knows what I want better than I do.

“I found this new culinary school. I really want to take a class.”

She proceeded with a long list of very tempting options.

“Ok, Fresh Cheese 101 it is,” I responded, not totally sure what I was getting myself into.

And that’s how I came to find myself in Portland’s Culinary Workshop (PCW) on Friday night with a cooking thermometer in my hand.

PCW opened earlier this year and is the brainchild of two food-loving women, Melinda Casady and Susana Holloway. Tired of working the professional circuit of culinary schools, the women wanted a place that was open, fun and educational. It’s all about getting their students to learn about good food, the kind of philosophy that anyone with a love of good food can get behind.

My visions of an intimidating chef hovering over my shoulder as I shakily held my thermometer in boiling milk soon disappeared, and by the time Susana had put a glass of wine in my hand and a Fresh Cheese 101 print out in front of me, I realized that I felt surprisingly at home. Cooking with fresh ingredients with glass of wine in hand? If I’m perfectly honest, it’s sort of my ideal Friday night.

Susana walked us through our first concoction, lemon cheese, a simple combination of milk and lemon. Had I known cheese was this easy, I would have started making it long ago.

To quickly summarize: heat milk to a certain level, add in an acid (lemon, vinegar, rennet, etc.) to separate the protein from the water, drain in cheesecloth and then salt and flavor. Here I had visions of complex, elaborate cooking methods and really the most difficult part was choosing what herbs you wanted to throw in the farmer’s cheese. It comes as no surprise then that fresh cheese making has taken off in the underworld of foodies.

So we made our way through lemon cheese, farmer’s cheese, yogurt cheese (like cheese for dummies – if you have a fear of cheesemaking, start with this one, you can’t go wrong), queso fresco and even a batch of mozarella, with Susana encouraging us the entire way.

We talked extensively about the necessity of fresh ingredients – PCW’s herb mixture comes straight from Susana’s garden – and where to track down harder to find items, like cheese salt, flakier than sea salt and easily obtained at urbancheesecraft.com. If you’re a self-proclaimed “cheese whore” watch out, this site will suck you in.

I learned that although you could probably spend a month experimenting with whole cow’s milk cheese and variations on the theme, goat’s milk is a totally different endeavor, as the goat’s milk found in most grocery stores is heavily pasteurized and therefore does not do well in the cheese making process. If you want your own chèvre, you better get the milk directly from the source.

At the end of the evening I had a paper shopping bag filled with a multitude of containers carrying enough cheese to last me for an entire week; like gold to a foodie. I was smart and took it all home to my parents when I went and visited, which certainly upped the daughter points.

End result of my first culinary class venture? New cooking obsession, and one that doesn’t entail a whole lot of work and is still going to impress at dinner parties. Just think of your foodie image potential:

“May I interest you in some fresh lemon cheese with oregano?”

Your guests won’t know what to do with themselves.

As for my cooking class fear, in my three hours spent mixing cheeses in a professionally outfitted kitchen I was reminded of one thing: now matter how much measuring I refuse to do, I am in fact a total food addict.

I’ll be back. But this time with my own thermometer.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s weekly column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground, discovering what’s new and different in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to the culinary avant garde.

Images: Anna Brones

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