   |
SWEETENED condensed milk is everywhere. There’s probably a can or two lurking in your cabinets. It is the key to Key lime pie; it brings the sweet to Vietnamese coffee; it went to Rio for Carnaval last month in the shape of brigadeiros, bite-size balls of milk fudge that are a Brazilian national treat.
But Victoria Belanger, a photographer also known as the Jello Mold Mistress of Brooklyn, may have a unique relationship with the stuff.
“Sweetened condensed milk solved a lot of problems for me,” said Ms. Belanger, who brings her professional understanding of light and color to an ongoing jellied-desserts experiment. “Now I can make opaque layers that set off the clear, bright-colored ones.”
Every few weeks, Ms. Belanger fills a few of her 30 molds — in shapes like fish, roses and starfish — with a mixture of condensed milk and gelatin. She’s drawn to imported and self-created flavors, like mango or crème caramel or milk chocolate-macadamia nut. She unmolds the shapes, photographs them while they still have their satiny sheen, then feeds them to pals and neighbors. “The condensed milk makes it more like a pudding, more satisfying for people,” she said. “I tried Cool Whip and vanilla ice cream, but only condensed milk got it really smooth.”
Sweetened condensed milk and its unsweetened cousin, evaporated milk, have never been in favor with food snobs. “Originally, these were marketed as nutritional solutions, not luxury ingredients,” said Anne Mendelson, a food historian and the author of “Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages.” Fresh milk and cream have always been preferred by American consumers, she said, with the shelf-stable products seen as inferior, if useful, substitutes.
“It was probably frowned on because it comes in a can,” said Alex Stupak, the pastry chef at WD-50 on the Lower East Side, who has made frozen “Oreo” centers, doughnut fillings and even a tart-sweet mayonnaise from sweetened condensed milk. “It’s a righteous emulsifier,” he said. At Momofuku Milk Bar, the chef Christina Tosi uses it to smooth soft-serve ice creams like peaches-and-cream and cherries jubilee.
And as more American home cooks with roots in Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean chime into the national culinary conversation, condensed milk is getting a lot of love. “Just try telling anyone from Latin America that canned milk isn’t real milk,” Ms. Mendelson said. “You’ll have a fight on your hands.”
In the Philippines, it is drizzled onto halo-halo, the popular dessert of shaved ice, coconut and a riot of toppings; in Jamaica, it’s mixed with stout, sherry and nutmeg to make a robust cream punch. Hong Kong-style “French toast,” served at cafes there, is toasted white bread glazed with condensed milk and peanut butter; it is a key ingredient in Thai iced tea and in Vietnamese coffee; and Brazilian cooks whip it with avocado to make gorgeous pale-green desserts like pudim de abacate.
In regions like these, where dairy-making might be difficult, expensive or untraditional, the stability and reliable sweetness of condensed milk has earned it a lot of fans. “It is hard to explain the relationship people have with it in Latin America,” said Leticia Moreinos Schwartz, a cooking teacher in Connecticut who grew up in Rio de Janeiro. “Leite moça came when life was hard and there were not many treats,” she said, using the generic Brazilian term that means “milk of the lady,” a reference to the Swiss milkmaid on cans of Nestlé condensed milk, introduced to Brazil in 1921.
It is one of the three milks in Mexican tres leches cake, and can be caramelized right in the can to make dulce de leche. (Put the can in a pot and boil for three hours; keep the can covered with boiling water or it will overheat and may explode.)
Sweetened condensed milk came on the United States market in 1856, the brainchild of Gail Borden, a chronic culinary inventor. (He had already patented a prototype of a complete nutrition bar, which he called a “meat biscuit.”) Mr. Borden began experimenting with sterilized milk after a series of “swill milk” scandals that revealed the true contents of much of the milk then for sale in American cities: chalk powder, molasses and vermin.
His process — a combination of vacuum pressure, heat and added sugar — produced a dairy product that is nearly indestructible, with a shelf life of years. Mr. Borden made his fortune supplying condensed milk to the Union Army in the Civil War. It was airlifted into Berlin in the 1940s, and more recently has opened up Asia as a major market for American milk.
“We grow up with it,” said Kathy Wong, an owner of Laut restaurant, one of few places in New York that serves real Malaysian pulled tea, or teh tarik. It is a thick brew of strong tea — preferably Boh brand, grown in the cool Cameron Highlands north of Kuala Lumpur — and condensed milk. (Fresh-squeezed ginger juice can be added to make teh halia, reminiscent of Indian chai.) The mixture is poured vigorously back and forth from one pot to another: this is the “pulling” process, which makes the drink smooth and gives it a frothy top. “The higher the pour, the thicker the top,” said her partner Camie Lai, who said that hawkers compete for customers by pulling the tea behind their backs, or from ever-greater heights. Among those who see cooking as an ongoing science experiment or craft project, condensed milk can do the work of milk, sugar and eggs combined — and can often stand in for all three.
Jessica P Lin, who has a blog, epicuriouseateries.blogspot.com, where she posts recipes and restaurant reviews, long tinkered with recipes for ice cream that wouldn’t require an ice cream maker. “At the time, I was a culinary student, but all I had at home was a $10 hand mixer,” said Ms. Lin, who grew up in Dallas and now lives in New York. She has often visited Taiwan, where her parents were born, and where condensed milk is a popular topping for dessert, or bread.
Ms. Lin said that she finally hit on the idea of whipping condensed milk, which she always keeps on hand, into heavy cream. “I was basically trying to be lazy and avoid making an egg custard,” she said. The result takes just a few minutes to get into the freezer.
Condensed milk has a very different chemical profile than fresh, and behaves accordingly. It will not curdle in the presence of acid, like regular milk would (that’s why it’s used for Key lime pie). The sugar crystals in condensed milk will not clump together and harden (this is called seizing), making it useful for candies like fudge.
“All candy-making is about preventing crystallization,” said Michael Chu, an engineer based in Austin, Tex., who writes about his kitchen experiments online at Cooking for Engineers. Mr. Chu’s chocolate fudge recipe, which he calls “absurdly easy,” has the pleasantly cakey, almost sandy texture desirable in fudge, which can be tricky to achieve using milk and butter. He uses condensed milk to reduce the ingredients in the fudge to a mere three (salt is optional), and to eliminate the dreaded step of cooking the sugar syrup to the soft-ball stage. “The manufacturing process has already done that work for you,” he said.
Fudge made from condensed milk is the base for brigadeiros, bite-size sweets served in paper frills and covered with sprinkles. “Brigadeiros are like the cupcakes of Brazil,” Ms. Moreinos Schwartz said. “They are at every birthday party.” (They are named for a once-popular politician, Brigadier Eduardo Gomes, who ran for president in 1945 under the slogan “Vote no brigadeiro, que é bonito e é solteiro” — “Vote for the brigadier, who’s good-looking and single.”)
Once, Ms. Moreinos Schwartz said, it would have been odd to serve brigadeiros at a grown-up dinner party — “it would have been a French chocolate mousse instead” — but now Brazilian cooks like her are embracing their own traditions. In her new book, “The Brazilian Kitchen,” she has transformed the classic, tooth-aching recipe with unsweetened coconut, pistachio paste and real chocolate sprinkles. “Now when I go home, the brigadeiros taste too sweet,” she said ruefully. “I’m like, guys, come on! You’re killing the fudge!”
Latkes or Hamentashen? That was the question this past Wednesday as students, faculty, and staff packed into 26-100 in anticipation of MIT Hillel’s annual Latkes vs. Hamentashen debate. Six professors fought it out, arguing for the ultimate Jewish food product: the latke (a fried potato pancake eaten during Hanukkah) or the hamentash (a three-sided filled cookie eaten during Purim).
Professor Keith A. Nelson of the Chemistry Department, the moderator, opened the night by showing how latkes and hamentashen influence MIT, both in research and buildings. Keith claimed that both latkes and hamentashen inspired architect Frank O. Gehry, who designed the Stata Center. “Gehry used the shapes of the latke and the hamentash in the design of the Stata Center,” he said.
Representing the latke were Amy Smith ’84 of D-Lab, Professor Barbara Imperiali of the Chemistry Department, and Dr. Erika B. Wagner ’02 of the X-Prize Lab. On the other side of the room, representing the hamentash were Department Head Eric E. Grimson of EECS, Assistant Professor Marta C. González of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Department Head Michael Sipser of Mathematics. Each professor was allowed seven minutes to present why his or her treat was superior to the other. After each presentation, the opposing team was allowed a 90-second rebuttal.
In order to decide which team would have the choice to go first, the audience had a chanting battle. The right section of the audience yelled “hamentash” while the left section screamed “latke.” The middle section of the audience was asked to decide which side was louder — the latke won. Team Latke chose to go second.
Grimson presented first, giving the audience a history lesson about the pastries. He presented photos of British and colonial hats from the 18th century, noting that the colonial tricorn hats were remarkably similar to hamentashen, and the British hats were like latkes. He said that hamentashen resemble golden triangles, and can be used to construct a perfect pentagram, which many religions believe have the power to protect against evil. Grimson criticized latkes for being circular, comparing them to the Golden Circle, a popular tourist route in Iceland. He pointed out that because Iceland is a bankrupt and cold country, latkes are not powerful.
He also examined the economic impact of hamentash and latke consumption and determined that hamentash are better for global economies while latkes destroy national economies. He argued that a latke is similar to mashed McDonald’s french fries, which are made of only one type of potato. The last time an economy depended on one type of potato, the irish potato famine happened, crippling Ireland’s economy. The hamentash, on the other hand, uses a variety of ingredients produced by various countries all over the world.
In response to Grimson, Smith revived the image of the latke by presenting the triple bottom line for measuring success: prosperity, planet, and potatoes. She demonstrated how the triple bottom line explains why the latke is superior for a sustainable world. She added that 2008 was the U.N. Year of the Potato, whereas not once has a hamentash filling had its own year.
For Team Latke, Wagner convinced the audience that, because potatoes can be brought to space, latkes make great zero-gravity meals. On the other hand, because “safety in space requires no sharp edges,” hamentashen are useless — even dangerous — in space.
Sipser wrapped things up for Team Hamentash with the HamenTheorem, which proves by contradiction that the hamentash is better than the latke. First, the proof assumes latkes are best. Then by obviousness, he claimed that hamentashen are better than nothing, and by first assumption, claimed that nothing is better than latkes. Therefore, Sipser argued that the HamenTheorem proved that hamentashen are better than latkes.
Imperiali used the rules of organic chemistry to criticize hamentashen. She said that the triangle structure of the hamentash is “unreliable, unstable, and duplicitous” because is like a three-membered ring. She then concluded her presentation with a question to the audience: “Everyone may tell you that a triangle is perfect, but what happens when that triangle isn’t a triangle anymore?”
Team Hamentash made the first rebuttal, quickly countering Team Latke’s arguments with ones such as “the Challenger disaster was caused by an O-ring and not a hamentash ring.” Instead of a traditional rebuttal, Team Latke presented a photo of the Latke-Hamentash fold, a protein which, when rotated, had 3 triangular sections surrounded by 3 circular sections, symbolizing latkes and hamentashen coexisting in harmony.
The debate, as always, ended in a tie, allowing for another debate next year.
