Icelandic Skyr Butter

Captain’s Log: Covid Date 16, we have been isolating for over two weeks at this point, leaving home only to exercise or brave the grocery store. Supplies are plentiful, if not up to usual standards. Internet service remains spotty, one puzzle has been completed, zero books read, and-

Ok, I’ll stop, because if you didn’t also decide that now was the perfect time to finally watch Star Trek: The Next Generation, then you won’t find my Picard impression entertaining out of context. I just wrote it and I’ll admit it wasn’t funny even in context. But, side note: I’m 3.5 seasons into the show, and wow the Enterprise crew encountered a lot of strange alien viruses, didn’t they?

Star Captains, they’re just like us!

Anyway, hello from Social Distancing 2020! I figured now is a good time to finally tell you about some delicious things I cooked and baked last year, since I don’t really have the excuse anymore of being too busy to write. None of us are really too busy these days, unless of course, you work on the frontlines in a medical, food delivery, grocery, or other capacity. In which case, THANK YOU. It really can’t be said enough (and honestly probably isn’t).

If you couldn’t tell from my last post, I am carb-loading through this emotional roller coaster and I think we should all give ourselves permission to do so.

Speaking of carbs, here’s a fun story! Claire read my list of what I’ve been eating and found it so hilarious she decided to Face-Time me in the middle of the day on Monday to tell me. You know what’s really great for stress right now? Unexpected, out of the ordinary calls from your sister in the middle of the day. Especially when her first words to you are “I’m crying!”

Turns out, she was crying from laughing so hard at the image of me stuffing my face with banana bread, so I promptly hung up on her and went back to the work meeting I had paused because oh my god my sister is calling she never does that I hope everything is ok.

Ahem. So, yes, the carb-loading. I am not the only one doing this. How do I know? Well, my local grocery store’s shelves were absolutely bare of almost all flour today when I finally got inside. There was not a single bag of flour to be found except the flour alternatives. Apparently this very real pandemic has cured the gluten one.

But the people are baking!

Baked goods often need butter, don’t they? So, almost a year later, now seems like the perfect time to share my version of what I think of as Icelandic butter.

Is that what they call it in Iceland? I don’t know, but my sister, Mom and I encountered it at nearly every meal we ate last May, on a trip that feels like a lifetime ago now. From our first bread basket at the Blue Lagoon to our last dinner, we were served fluffy, whipped butter, lightened with skyr (Icelandic yogurt), and garnished with salt. We had many fantastic meals on that trip, but I became a little obsessed with this butter! I knew I would make it as soon as I returned home. I even bought a container of birch salt to bring home with me for the ultimate, authentic garnish.

So, if you are filling your time these days with more baking than usual, try this butter! It’s fantastic slathered on a plain piece of good bread, or I’m sure would be great on muffins or pancakes (maybe sans finishing salt) or on cornbread or banana bread. Anything you want to spread some butter on, try this!

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Whipped Skyr Butter

For the butter:

• 4 tbs European style salted butter, softened

• 2 tbs plain skyr, or other plain, thick yogurt (preferably full fat), room temperature

• finishing salt, such as Maldon, or a flavored variety (optional)

• bread, for serving

1. In a large bowl, or in the bowl of a mixer, add the softened butter and skyr. If mixing by hand, mash the two together until combined, then vigorously whip to incorporate as much air as possible. If using a stand mixer, whip with the whisk attachment until the mixture is light and fluffy and very, very pale.

2. To serve, scoop butter into a serving dish and sprinkle with finishing salt, if using. Serve generously with good, crusty bread.

Notes:

• You want the skyr and the butter to be roughly the same temperature, or for the skyr to at least not be cold from the fridge, so it doesn’t harden the butter when you mix the two together.

• Butter can be stored in the fridge for a few weeks. It will harden when chilled but should soften to a light, fluffy consistency again when brought to room temperature.

• Want to use up the rest of your skyr? Try it in pancakes!

"My" Salad Dressing

It might seem weird to put quotes around a possessive here for “my” salad dressing. No, I promise you I do know how to use quotation marks, mostly (someone tell me definitively, do I put the punctuation inside or outside when I’m ending a sentence?). But really, I put the quotes in because I associate ownership of this recipe more with David Lebovitz. It was from his blog where I first got the idea to repurpose leftover salty feta into a salad dressing, and after rereading that post, now I know he actually got the idea from the Joy of Cooking.

You can follow that attribution chain if you like, but on this blog, the ownership of this dressing was bestowed on me by my brother in law, Ryan, who requested I make this dressing during a visit to Boston by asking for “your salad dressing, you know, that one you made one time!”

No, I didn’t know! I have a salad dressing?? Apparently, yes!

That “one time” was way back in December 2017, when I wanted to make a creamy dressing for a wedge salad, but neither I nor my sister like blue cheese dressing, so I needed a substitute, and Claire had some feta in her fridge. I added some vinegar, herbs, and olive oil and blended it all up, and I guess “my dressing” was born.

And really, it doesn’t matter who lays claim to owning this recipe, everyone should be making it! If you make anything with feta you probably have some leftover, and the rest of the ingredients can be whatever favorite vinegars, olive oils, and dried or fresh herbs you have on hand, plus a little ground pepper if you like. I add shallots whenever I have them. And you can even keep it simple and just mash it all into a chunky dressing or go the extra step and blend it until creamy, both are equally delicious.

Whatever you do, just use the good stuff, ok? That pre-crumbled feta isn’t going to work very well here. If you do insist on using it, well, you are the master of your own kitchen, so I can’t stop you.

But in that case, we’ll extend this ownership chain and you can call that “your” dressing, ok?

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Feta Salad Dressing

Inspired by David Lebovitz

• 4 oz feta (a good quality block of it, not pre-crumbled)

• 1 small shallot, minced

• 1/2 tsp dried oregano (or thyme, parsley, etc)

• fresh ground black pepper

• vinegar (sherry, apple cider, red wine, whatever your preference)

• extra virgin olive oil

1. In a bowl, add the feta, shallot and oregano and mash together. Add a little black pepper, then add vinegar, mashing as you add it until you get a loose paste-like consistency. Add in enough olive oil to form a liquid dressing, loosening with a little water if needed (or more vinegar). At this point, you can either serve as is, with small feta chunks visible, or blend the dressing to a creamy, smooth consistency.

2. To serve, toss with your favorite salad ingredients. The dressing works well as a sub for blue cheese dressing in a wedge salad. I especially like it tossed with fragile butter lettuce, radishes sliced paper thin, chives, and sliced avocado, pictured here above.

Ma's Modern Butter

Did you ever read the Little House series? I loved Laura’s pioneer adventures, following her family from the big woods of Wisconsin to the prairies of North Dakota. I read them all, repeatedly, and enough that...

Sorry, I have to digress into a side bar here, because I remember that when I failed an eye test in 4th grade and learned that I needed glasses, the woman administering the test pointed to my Little House book and suggested condescendingly that maybe I needed glasses because I read “such big, thick books.” Um, what? Pretty sure that’s not how eyesight works, lady, and my Accelerated Reader points were off the charts, ok? I kind of want to go back in time and scream at her about the importance of children’s literacy, but like, I’m so over it, I swear.

ANYWAY.

Of all the books, my favorite was always the first one, Little House in the Big Woods, for its descriptions of how the family put up food for the winter (the food scenes from Almanzo’s book were always a close second). Pa slaughters pigs and taps trees for syrup, and then Ma makes sausages, head cheese, and maple candy, and Laura gets to eat the crispy tail from the pig and I think they play soccer with the bladder or something. 

My very favorite though, was the description of how Ma turns fresh cream into butter, by churning it until the solids form a dripping ball of fresh butter, then mixing in fresh carrot juice for color and salting it for flavor, and then pressing it into a mold to form sticks. As a kid who grew up eating margarine, this sounded like heaven. 

When my obsession with The Great British Bake-Off led to me watching the Master Class series and the part where Mary Berry showed me how to “churn” my own butter, well, 22 years of repressed Little House memories came flooding back to me, and I was ready to go all Frontier House on my heavy cream. Unfortunately, while fresh butter may sound like heaven, as someone whose arms get tired whisking eggs, the churning part sounds like hell. 

Luckily, I have a modern helper in the form of my stand mixer! So I bought some heavy cream and put it to work, then added some mix-ins for a modern flair. My toast and my popcorn are thrilled, and I think Ma Ingalls would have been proud.

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Homemade Butter

Makes 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter. I could not find the original Mary Berry video I watched, so I followed the tutorial from The Kitchn.

• 1 qt heavy cream
• sea salt (optional)
• mix-ins, for compound butters like (truffle oil, black pepper or blueberries and lemon zest)

1. Beat heavy cream in the bowl of a stand mixer (or hand-held electric mixer) at high speed to whipped cream and then keep on going until the cream separates into solid curds and water (about 2-10 minutes depending on how much cream you are mixing). 
2. Gather together the solids into a strainer or cloth and squeeze and rinse with cold water until water runs clear. You want to be sure to get all the butter liquid out; this will turn the butter rancid within a few days if not. 
3. Gather rinsed butter into a ball and squeeze it together as much as you can and rinse again. If you want salted butter you can mix in 1/2-1 tsp of sea salt at this point. Dry with a cloth or paper towel, wrap tightly in plastic, and store either in the fridge or freezer.
4. To make compound butter: for truffle black pepper butter, mix in 1-2 tbs truffle flavored olive oil, black pepper and sea salt to taste, then stir well to combine. Wrap tightly in plastic and store as in step 3. For lemon blueberry butter, mix the zest of 1 lemon, sea salt to taste, and about 1/4 cup defrosted frozen wild blueberries (if you want the blueberries more liquidy, cook a bit to break them down, then cool completely before adding) and mix in well to combine. Wrap and store as in step 3.

Notes:

• Just a note here, you can have fun with your butter mix-ins and flavors, but I’m not advocating replacing store-bought butter. This is not a cost-effective way to get your butter fix, but if you find you have run out of butter but have some heavy cream on hand, or if you just want to use up extra cream, this is an excellent solution.