Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

by Barbara Kingsolver

  Confidence was not yet ours, but we got busy anyway, we maverick dairywomen, fathers, buffalo ranchers, and dreamers. It does feel subversive to flout the professionals and make a thing yourself. Our nostrils inhaled the lemony-sweet scent of boiling whey. The steamy heat of the kitchen curled our hair, as new textures and flavors began to rise before us as possibilities: mascarpone, fromagina, mozzarella. Remote possibilities, maybe. That many successes in one day still seemed unlikely.

  At lunch break I checked out the wildly colorful powder room, where a quote from Alice in Wonderland was painted on the wall:

  "'There's no use trying,' Alice said. 'One can't believe impossible things.'

  "'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'"

  It's fair to admit, I wasn't a complete novice. I had already been making cheese for a few years, ordering supplies and cultures from Ricki and following the recipes in her book. It wasn't only a spirit of adventure that led my family into this line of cooking, but also bellyaches. Lactose intolerance is a common inherited condition in which a person's gut loses, after childhood, its ability to digest the milk sugar called lactose. The sugary molecules float around undigested in the intestine, ferment, and create a gassy havoc. The effect is somewhat like eating any other indigestible carbohydrate, such as cardboard or grass.

  This is not an allergy or even, technically, a disorder. Physical anthropologists tell us that age four, when lactose intolerance typically starts, is about when nature intended for our kind to be wholly weaned onto solid food; in other words, a gradual cessation of milk digestion is normal. In all other mammals the milk-digesting enzyme shuts down soon after weaning. So when people refer to this as an illness, I'm inclined to point out we L.I.'s can very well digest the sugars in grown-up human foods like fruits and vegetables, thank you, we just can't nurse. From a cow. Okay?

  But there is no animal weirder than Homo sapiens. Over thousands of years of history, a few isolated populations developed intimate relationships with their domestic animals and a genetic mutation gave them a peculiar new adaptation: they kept their lactose-digesting enzymes past childhood. Geneticists have confirmed that milk-drinking adults are the exception to the norm, identifying a deviant gene on the second chromo-some that causes lactase persistence. (The gene is SNP C/T13910, if you care.) This relatively recent mutation occurred about ten thousand years ago, soon after humans began to domesticate milk-producing animals. The gene rapidly increased in these herding populations because of the unique advantage it conferred, allowing them to breast-feed for life from another species.

  The gene for lifelong lactose digestion has an 86 percent frequency among northern Europeans. By contrast, it shows up in only about one-third of southern Europeans, who historically were not big herders. In the Far East, where dairy cattle were unknown, the gene is absent. Even now, Southeast Asians have virtually zero tolerance for lactose. Only about 10 percent of Asian Americans can digest milk as adults, along with fewer than half of American Jews and about a quarter of rural Mexicans. Among Native Americans it's sketchily documented--estimates range from 20 to 40 percent. Among African Americans, adult milk-drinking tolerance is high, nearly 50 percent, owing to another interesting piece of human history. The mutation for lactase persistence emerged several times independently, alongside the behavior of adult milk-drinking. It shows up in populations that have little else in common other than cows: the tall, lean Fulani of West Africa; the Khoi pastoralists of southern Africa; and the fair-skinned Northern Europeans.

  And then, to make a long story short, one of those populations proceeded to take over the world. If that's a debatable contention, let's just say they've gotten their hands on most of the planet's billboards and commercials. And so, whether or not we were born with the La Leche for Life gene, we're all hailed with a steady song and dance about how we ought to be drinking tall glasses of it every day. And we believe it, we want those strong bones and teeth. Oh, how we try to behave like baby cows. Physicians will tell you, the great majority of lactose-intolerant Americans don't even know it. They just keep drinking milk, and having stomachaches.

  White though we are, my redheaded elder daughter and me, some sturdy, swarthy gene has come down through the generations to remind us that "white" is relative. We're lactose intolerant. But still, like most everyone else, we include some dairy products in our diet. I can't blame dairy-industry propaganda, purely, for our behavior. The milk of mammals is a miraculously whole food for the babes it was meant to nourish; it's the secret of success for the sheep, oxen, bison, kangaroos, seals, elephants, whales, and other mammals that have populated every corner of the blue-green world with their kind and their suckling young. For the rest of us it's a tempting source of protein, calcium, minerals, and wholesome fats.

  It's no surprise that cultures the world over have found, through centuries of experimentation, countless ways to make it more digestible. Yogurt, kefir, paneer, queso fresco, butter, mascarpone, montasio, parmesan, haloumi, manchego, bondon, emmental, chenna, ricotta, and quark: the forms of altered milk are without number. Taste is probably not the main point. They all keep longer than fresh milk, and their production involves reducing the lactose sugars.

  The chemistry is pretty simple. Milk is about 85 percent water; the rest is protein, minerals, butterfat, vitamins and trace elements, and sugars (lactose)--which are dissolved in the water. When the whole caboodle is made more acidic, the protein solids coagulate into a jellylike curd. When gently heated, this gel releases the liquid whey (lactose and water). Traditionally the milk is curdled by means of specific bacteria that eat--guess what?--lactose. These selective bugs munch through the milk, turning the lactose into harmless lactic acid, which causes the curdling.

  The sugars that still remain are dissolved in the whey. As this liquid separates and is drained off from the curd, lactose goes with it. Heating, pressing, and aging the curd will get rid of still more whey, making it harder and generally sharper-flavored. As a rule, the harder the cheese, the lower the lactose content. (Anything less than 2 percent lactose is tolerable for just about everybody.) Also, higher fat content means less lactose--butter has none. Conversely, sweet condensed milk is 12 percent lactose. For other products, the amount of lactose removed depends on the bacterial cultures used for fermentation. A good live-culture yogurt contains as many as five different sugar-eating bacteria. A little biochemistry goes a long way, in safely navigating the dairy path.

  At our house soft cheeses were the tricky terrain. Factory-made cheeses can vary enormously in lactose content. Fermentation and whey removal take time that mass production doesn't always allow. Some soft cheeses are not cultured at all, but curdled simply by adding an acid. For whatever reason, store-bought cream cheese proved consistently inedible for us. But I don't like to give up. If I could monitor the process myself, seeing personally to lactose removal, I wondered if I might get something edible.

  Soft cheeses are ridiculously easy to make, it turns out. The hardest part is ordering the cultures (by catalog or online). With these packets of cheesemaking bugs in your freezer and a gallon of good milk, plus a thermometer, colander, and some cheesecloth, soft cheeses are at your command: in a stainless steel pot, warm the milk to 85 degrees, open the culture packet, and stir the contents into the milk. Take the pot off the stove, cover, let it stand overnight. By the next morning it will have gelled into a soft white curd. Spoon this into a cheesecloth-lined colander and let the whey run off. Salt it, spread it on bread, smile. Different bacterial cultures make different cheeses. The bugs stay up all night doing the work, not you. You just sleep. Is that not cool?

  Our chevre and fromagina were so tasty, and digestible, we were inspired to try hard cheeses. These are more work, but it's basically the same process. Most recipes call for both a bacterial culture and rennet (a natural enzyme), which together c
ause the milk to set up into a very firm curd in just minutes, rather than overnight. For mozzarella, this curd is kneaded like dough, heated until almost untouchably hot, then stretched like taffy, which is a lot of fun. The whole process--from cold milk to a beautiful braided, impress-your-guests mozzarella on the plate--takes less than an hour. For hard cheeses like cheddar, the firm curd is sliced into little cubes, stirred and heated gently, then pressed into a round wheel and, ideally, aged for weeks or months. We have to hide our cheeses from ourselves to keep them around this long. Over time, we've converted a number of our friends to the coven of cheesemaking.

  At Ricki's workshop we really did make six impossible things, but only half of them by noon. Lunch included our queso blanco stir-fried with vegetables, sliced tomatoes with our mozzarella, and mascarpone-filled dates. We tasted, congratulated ourselves, and headed back for the next round. We put our cheddar into a mechanical press to squeeze extra moisture out of the curd, while Ricki talked about aging and waxing as if these really lay ahead of us--as if we were all going home to make cheeses. I'd be willing to bet we all did. At the workshop's end, everyone gathered in Ricki's office to order the cultures and supplies we'd need for our next efforts. A few dollars' worth of packaged bacteria will curdle many gallons of milk. A cheese thermometer costs ten dollars, and the rest of the basics--stainless steel bowls and pots--already reside in the kitchen of any earnest cook. We left with the confidence to strike out on our own. Our friends who'd shared the workshop went back to their homes in Virginia, New York, and Boston. They all called me within the week with exciting cheese updates.

  Why do we do this? It's hard to say. Some are refining exquisite products, while others of us are just shooting for edible, but we're all dazzled by the moment of alchemy when the milk divides into clear whey and white curd, or the mozzarella stretches in our hands to a glossy golden skein. We're connecting across geography and time with the artisans of Camembert, the Greek shepherds, the Mongols on the steppes who live by milking their horses--everybody who ever looked at a full-moon pot of white milk and imagined cheese. We're recalling our best memories infused with scents, parental love, and some kind of food magically coming together in the routines of childhood. We're hoping our kids will remember us somewhere other than in the driver's seat of the car.

  Later in the summer when this workshop and trip were behind us, Steven's mother came for a long visit. She served grandma duty on many fronts, but seemed happiest in the kitchen. She told us stories I hadn't heard before, mostly about her mother, who at age fifteen was sent out from her hardscrabble village in the mountains of Italy to seek her fortune in America. In the dusty town of Denver she married a handsome Sicilian vegetable farmer and raised five daughters with a good working knowledge of gardening, pasta, and other fundamentals. She made ricotta routinely, to the end of her life.

  Laura was her name, ultimately known as Nonnie, and I suppose she'd have loved to see us on a summer Saturday making mozzarella together: daughter, grandson, great-granddaughters, and me, all of us laughing, stretching the golden rope as far as we could pull it. Three more generations answering hunger with the oldest art we know, and carrying on.

  * * *

  Growing Up in the Kitchen

  BY CAMILLE

  In our house, the kitchen is the place to be. The time we spend making dinner is hugely important because it gets us together after all our separate agendas, and when we sit down to eat we have a sense that the food in front of us is special. Growing vegetables from seed and raising poultry from hatchlings obviously makes us especially grateful for our food. But just making dinner from scratch gives us a little time to anticipate its flavor, so we'll notice every bite.

  Cooking in our family helped me cultivate certain food habits that I later found out are a little unusual for my generation--for example, I can't stand to eat anything while I'm standing up. I sit down, even if it's just a quick snack, to make sure this will be a thoughtful munching instead of a passive grab. I'll probably carry that habit through my whole life, and nag my kids about it.

  I know plenty of families that have dinner together, and some that cook, but very few that take "cooking from scratch" to the level mine does. I've never had any illusions about how unique it is to have one parent who makes cheese and another who bakes bread almost daily. The friends I've brought home over the years have usually been impressed and intrigued by the wacky productions taking place in our kitchen. They definitely enjoyed eating fresh, warm bread at dinner and homemade cream cheese at lunch. It was a little awkward, though, when one of my vegetarian friends and I arrived at my house one Saturday when my parents were in the middle of making turkey sausage.

  "What are they doing?" she whispered, as she stared at the tube of encased raw meat that was steadily growing longer on our countertop. "Oh, that's just sausage. Don't worry about it." I nudged her past the kitchen toward my room. The scenario was a little embarrassing, but it probably

  would have been more uncomfortable to come home to parents who used the kitchen for screaming and throwing dishes at each other. Anyway, whose parents aren't embarrassing sometimes?

  The hardest thing about being raised in a household where most everything is made from scratch is that someday you move out and have to deal with store-bought bread and yogurt. My mom was quick to catch on to the leverage she got out of that. "I guess you'll have to come home more often if you want good food," she would tell me. Away from home, I realized I missed more about mealtimes than just the food. I missed picking fresh greens from the garden, or taking a jar of dried tomatoes from the pantry, as the starting point of a meal. It's obviously convenient to grab a salad or package of sushi from the dining hall between classes, but eating on the fly seems like cheating to me.

  Maybe I feel this way because my make-it-yourself upbringing drummed into me the ethic of working for the things I want. I've been involved in growing and cooking the food that feeds me since I was a little kid, and it has definitely given me a certain confidence about relying on myself. Just as meals don't materialize in the grocery store, I realize a new car and a good education won't just spring into my life on their own, but hopefully I will get there. If everything my heart desired was handed to me on a plate, I'd probably just want something else.

  Cooking meals doesn't have to be that complicated. Most of the recipes in this book take less than an hour to prepare. The average American spends three and a half hours watching TV every day. Even if a family can only manage to eat a meal together a couple of times a week, whether it's breakfast, lunch, or dinner, my vote would be that it's worth the effort. For most of my high school years, dinner was often the only chance I'd have to see my sister or parents all day. We could check up on each other and recount the traumas and victories of our days. We might end up laughing through the whole meal. A choking hazard, maybe, but also a pretty good way to relieve stress.

  Cheese is one of our favorite special foods to make from scratch. This recipe for homemade mozzarella is from Home Cheese Making by Ricki

  Carroll and really does take only thirty minutes. For the rennet, plus the cultures for making other cheeses, contact New England Cheesemaking Supply Company.

  30-MINUTE MOZZARELLA

  Measure out all additives before you start, in clean glass or ceramic cups. Use unchlorinated water.

  1 gallon pasteurized milk (NOT ultra-pasteurized)

  11/2 level teaspoons citric acid dissolved in 1/4 cup cool water

  Stir the milk on the stove in a stainless steel kettle, heating very gently. At 55deg add the citric acid solution and mix thoroughly. At 88deg it should begin to curdle.

  1/4 teaspoon liquid rennet, diluted in 1/4 cup cool water

  Gently stir in diluted rennet with up-and-down motion, and continue heating the milk to just over 100deg, then turn off heat. Curds should be pulling away from sides of pot, ready to scoop out. The whey should be clear. (If it's still milky, wait a few minutes.) Use a large slotted spoon or ladle to mo
ve curds from pot to a 2-quart microwaveable bowl. Press curds gently with hands to remove as much whey as possible, and pour it off. Microwave the curds on high for one minute, then knead the cheese again with hands or a spoon to remove more whey. (Rubber gloves help--this gets hot!) Microwave two more times (about 35 seconds each), kneading between each heating. At this point, salt the cheese to taste, then knead and pull until it's smooth and elastic. When you can stretch it into ropes like taffy, you are done. If the curds break instead, they need to be reheated a bit. Once cheese is smooth and shiny, roll it into small balls to eat warm or store for later in the refrigerator.

  Lacking a microwave, you can use the pot of hot whey on the stove for the heating-and-kneading steps. Put the ball of curd back in with a big slotted spoon, and heat it until it's almost too hot to touch. Good stretching temperature is 175 degrees.

  Here are three great ways to eat your mozzarella:

  SUMMERTIME SALAD

  2 large tomatoes 1 ball of mozzarella

  Basil leaves

  Olive oil

  Salt to taste

  Slice tomatoes and spread them out on a large platter. Place a thin slice of cheese and a basil leaf on each slice of tomato. Drizzle olive oil over top, sprinkle with salt, and serve.

  EGGPLANT PAPOUTZAKIA

  2 pounds eggplant

  Olive oil

  Slice eggplant lengthwise and saute lightly in olive oil. Remove from skillet and arrange in a baking dish.

  2 medium onions, garlic to taste

  2 large tomatoes, diced

  2 teaspoons nutmeg