mizchef

posted by admin on Jun 11

Hi, all. Summer’s rolling in and we’re finally able to do all those things we love to do in beautiful weather. One of the nice things about summer is being able to stroll leisurely around the neighborhood after a good dinner.  (I suppose you can do that in winter, too, but who wants to?)

The other evening, I had dinner with a couple of friends in an area of Brooklyn called Carroll Gardens. It’s a really cute little area, reminiscent of Greenwich Village, only more intimate and with a “local” feel to it. Anyway, after dinner at an excellent vegan restaurant called Wild Ginger (more on that another time), we strolled Smith St. I picked up menus from restaurants I wanted to try, window shopped, and caught the strains of various types of music coming from different bars  (I really must try the Zombie Hut one of these days). On this stroll, I encountered a tiny little gourmet shop called Stinky’s Cheese. It’s aptly named, I realized as I stepped inside–the aroma of the cheeses they offer permeates the entire space.

Anyway, as much as I wanted to try many of the interesting products they had, I declined because 1) money was tight and 2) I was about to start a diet in two days. But on my way out, something caught my eye. It was a yogurt container, but it was a brand I’d never seen before, called siggi’s, and I had a feeling it was of the “all-natural, organic” ilk. So, I picked one up. It turned out that it was something called skyr, Icelandic-style strained non-fat yogurt.

So, here’s the scoop on skyr. According to siggi’s website,  skyr began with the Norse Vikings, who have been making skyr on Iceland since the 9th century. They say that the word skyr is probably derived from the Icelandic word skera, which means to cut or slice, and that the modern word for yogurt, jógúrt, didn’t exist in the Icelandic language until the 20th  century.

But skyr is not actually, technically, yogurt. While it’s very similar to Greek yogurt, skyr is actually a soft cheese. Siggi’s describes the product like this:  “Skyr was always, and is still, made from skim milk after the cream had been floated off to make butter. The skim was incubated with cultures and the resulting yogurt strained to take out the whey. Traditionally, the whey that subsequently came off the skyr was then used to pickle various foods in the summer to help last out Iceland’s long, arduous winters. Thus, skyr was part of a process that historically was centered on maximizing the yield and storage time of milk.”

In 2004, Siggi Hilmarsson began playing around with skyr recipes and eventually began a production plant in upstate New York and slowly expanded his selling base from local markets to several NYC stores. Siggi’s is now available in numerous locations along the East Coast.

Siggi’s skyr comes in plain, blueberry, orange and ginger, and pomegranate & passion fruit. I had the orange and ginger, and it was quite a different experience from the typical supermarket yogurt. It’s quite thick—even thicker, I think, than Greek yogurt—and very rich. It was so thick, in fact, that it took three sittings for me to finish it. The young lady behind the counter suggested I mix in some regular yogurt to thin it out. Instead, I stirred in a little soy milk and added a couple of cut-up strawberries, and it was delicious! Still took me three days, though.

For me, the skyr was reminiscent of marscarpone cheese (one of the main ingredients in tiramisú) in terms of thickness, only with a chalky edge to it. But the chalkiness is not unpleasant. And it was tangy, with the orange and ginger flavors really prominent. It has bits of candied ginger in it, giving it a textural contrast.  The best thing is that there are no space-age ingredients in it. No artificial sweeteners, gelatin, colors, and—oh, my god—no high-fructose corn syrup!! It’s sweetened with agave nectar ) and is coagulated with vegetable rennet, instead of animal rennet. Siggi’s only uses milk without growth hormones, and sources from local New York farmers.

Furthermore,  siggi’s designed a cup that uses 40 to 50% less plastic than regular yogurt cups. When you’re done with it, you pull off the cardboard sleeve and recycle it.

Skyr is a big part of  Icelandic cuisine, used in many different ways, including as a dessert with sugar and cream. It’s particularly high in protein (about 12%) and low in calories. Of course, it’s more expensive than your average yogurt. At Stinky’s, a 6-ounce container cost me $3.50. But this is not something I’d eat every day, either.

If you want to read more about siggi’s, visit their website at http://skyr.com. And to find where siggi’s is sold near you, enter your zip code in the search bar HERE.

So, that’s my new food find. If you find it, too, give it a taste and let me know what you think.

I hope everyone has a fabulous week. Enjoy!