morning on a bhutanese farm

yes i know i've been gone a long time, but look where i've been:



in bhutan, on farms!

well, on aum's farm one morning. we met her at 7:30am when she was milking her two beauties as she does every morning. i tried my paws at it, but i think it takes practice.



after milking, aum invited us into her kitchen for a traditional bhutanese breakfast.



her kitchen, typical of bhutanese farmhouses, is powered by this all-purpose wood stove. (see that handmade wooden pasta maker hanging up high towards the left? i want one!) there's an electric cook top with two burners on the right, and check it; a microwave. i think that's a rice cooker there also.



a traditional breakfast; salted butter tea, or sweet tea, buckwheat pancakes, fresh raw butter, wild strawberry jam, fried fresh cheese with chiles and butter, potatoes with chile and cheese, eazay (a kind of fresh chile chutney with cilantro, fresh cheese and a wild spice called local pepper) and rice.



after breakfast we made butter with the morning's milk plus the milk from the last couple of days. butter made from fresh raw milk, straight from the cow!



aum makes butter and fresh cheese twice weekly. with a family of 4 and two good milking cows, there's often times enough surplus butter to sell at the market or to use for barter.



she also sells her wild strawberry jam at the market (seen in breakfast photo above). last year she made 400 jars (!). this year she's planning on making 600 if she can harvest enough wild berries. go aum!



next we made the ubiquitous bhutanese cheese - it's in everything! and it's basically buttermilk ricotta.* after the butter is made, whatever is left over - i.e. the buttermilk - goes into a big ole' pot. and the big ole' pot - quite possible the biggest one i've ever seen - goes on top of the very hot wood stove.

nothing else was added except some very hot water as aum was trying to get the buttermilk to heat up enough to start the separation of curd and whey.



once the separation started, she had a deft stirring technique that gathered the curd into a neat clump. (read: no need for cheese cloth, butter muslin or dripping time!) it was a slow, rhythmic, stir-and-then-roll maneuver that made the cheese stack up upon itself in an ever increasing mound. in between her expert stir-rolls she scooped out ladle fulls of whey.



say cheese!



last step; scooping out mounds of warm cheese and squeezing and shaping them into balls - about the size of tennis balls. aum sells her surplus fresh cheese balls at the market for the equivalent of 60 US cents.



79% of the bhutanese are subsistence farmers, which means they grow for themselves most of what they eat. many have a family cow or two, and the whole country is dotted with small farmhouses and bright green crops.

the following crops are succession planted; rice, wheat or buckwheat depending on location, mustard (for oil) turnips (the greens for eating and the roots mostly for winter cattle feed!) daikon radish, potatoes and chiles. other crops are cabbage, cauliflower, pumpkin and corn.



to my surprise fermenting is not a typical bhutanese preserving technique. other than ara - their saki-like rice wine, also made with wheat or buckwheat, there's not much fermenting going on in them there hills.



the main preservation technique is drying. i saw many metal roofs red with chiles. chiles everywhere! and turnip greens, a winter staple, hanging like garland across windows, set to dry in the himalayan air. strips of beef and pork, and cubes of yak cheese too.



i was completely enamored with this small himalayan kingdom. if you'd like to see more photos of my trip to bhutan, you can find them on flickr.

pawnote: *go here for my own buttermilk ricotta recipe.