Hey, so I was wondering.
Here in the Russlands, we have a wonderful beverage known as ryazhenka, a kind of fermented baked milk. It's fucktons of awesome. It has this creamy brownish color because of the sugars in the milk caramelizing, and tastes better than kefir. Has anybody in here ever tried baked milk? I mean, Wikipedia has an
article, but does anybody in Western Europe or the US or the UK actually drink it?
This is related to the last discussion about whether tvorog is cheese (still think it's not: for me they are distinct, and the chain is like milk - tvorog - cheese. Saying that tvorog is cheese is like saying cheese is milk.) I kinda realized I eat a lot of dairy stuff. It's like, you think traditional food is something done by people in stupid clothing on stupid festivals nobody cares about, and then you realize that the everyday things you consume are markedly different from what the rest of the world eats.
Another thing: I dunno about other places, but in Russia, condensed milk comes in tin cans. So on trips, people who go on trips (an actual subculture in the post-USSR countries: guys who go hiking long distances, carrying all their grub with them, or sail down rivers in awesome Soviet kayaks) do a cool thing.
You have to take a pot of water, a can of condensed milk, chuck the can into the pot and boil it without opening the can for a few hours: take care so water doesn't run out, or the can could explode. You usually know it's done because the coating on the cans oxidizes after being boiled for a long time, and changes color from silver to gold. The result is like dulce de leche, but awesomer.
And the Turkic and Caucasian peoples have this drink called airan - it's like a frothy milk-something thing: weird but awesome.
If this post lacks coherence, sorry - I was a bit bored and decided to post some dairy-related stuff, just because. I'll go disappear now.