Pawaru-Grahmata

№ 7VIII. nodaļa

Putra

Three porridges: thick milk porridge, sour barley porridge and pūtelis

  • Serves 4–6
  • thick porridge about 1 hour (plus chilling for the fried version); sour porridge about 1 hour; pūtelis 10 minutes, plus 1–3 days to ferment
  • Melnraksts · vēl nav izmēģināts

1796Putra.

Modernizētslpp. 317–318 · PDF 331–332
4 porcijas

The book gives no quantities; the amounts below are ours.

Method

9 soļi

Thick milk porridge

  1. Rinse the grain. Bring it to the boil with 1 l milk and the salt in a heavy pan, then simmer very gently, stirring often and scraping the bottom, until soft and thick: about 30 minutes for rice, 45–60 minutes for barley. Add more milk if it gets too stiff. Milk porridge scorches easily; you can also cook it covered in the oven at 150 °C for 1–1½ hours.
  2. Spoon into a bowl, make a hollow in the middle and put the butter in it, or serve the cream alongside in a jug.
  3. Fried: spread the hot porridge 2 cm thick in a buttered tin and chill until firm, at least 2 hours. Cut into long fingers and fry in butter over medium heat for 3–4 minutes a side, until brown.

Sour porridge

  1. Simmer the grain in the water until soft, 40–60 minutes. Drain off any water that is left.
  2. Stir in the soured milk a spoonful at a time and keep the pan over low heat for 5 minutes without letting it boil (keep it below about 70 °C, or the milk splits).
  3. Put the sour cream in a serving bowl, pour in the porridge and stir well. Add salt to taste.

Pūtelis

  1. Mix the flours in a bowl or jar and stir in the boiling water to a smooth, thick paste. Cool to about 30 °C, then stir in the kefir or yoghurt.
  2. Cover loosely with a cloth and leave somewhere warm (25–30 °C) for 1–3 days, until it smells pleasantly sour, like yoghurt. Then keep it in the fridge.
  3. To serve, beat as much as you need with sour cream, and thin it with cream or milk until as thick or thin as you like. Serve cold.

Notes

What the book says vs. what we added

the book first lists what groats are made from: wheat, rye, barley, oats, buckwheat, lentils or rice, cooked thin or thick with milk or water. It then names three dishes, each printed in bold in the running text. *Bieza putra* (thick porridge) is cooked thick with fresh milk and served with butter in a hollow in the middle or with fresh cream in a sauce bowl, or cooled, cut lengthwise and fried brown in butter. *Skāba putra* (sour porridge) is barley groats boiled in water, drained, mixed with soured milk and kept on the heat without boiling, then stirred into sour cream. *Pūtels* (pūtelis) is barley and oat flour scalded with boiling water and left to ferment somewhere warm, then beaten with sour cream and thinned with cream or milk: "tasty and cooling in hot summer weather". The salt, the starter culture, the amounts and times are ours.

Pūtelis was an old Latvian summer dish of ground grain soured with milk. The book ferments the scalded flour with water alone, relying on the wild lactic bacteria in the flour. A spoonful of kefir makes the souring quicker and more reliable.

Fermentation safety

a good batch smells clean and sour. Throw it away if it smells rotten or shows mould (fuzzy, pink or black spots). Use clean utensils, and once it is sour keep it in the fridge and eat it within 2–3 days.

Soured milk

Latvian rūgušpiens is naturally soured milk. Kefir or buttermilk works.

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