Shetland heritage dairy with Pearl Young

I recently had the great privilege and pleasure of spending some time with Pearl Young in Westerskeld. She generously agreed to work with Taste of Shetland on their short film dedicated to some of Shetland’s heritage dairy produce. Pearl grew up on a croft in Westerskeld and learnt how to cook beest, kirn butter, make run milk, kirn milk and blaand as part of everyday croft life. She was brought up as part of one of those generations for whom hard work and a waste-not-want-not approach are deeply ingrained.

Wasting any of the milk her small herd of pedigree Shetland kye produce is unthinkable for Pearl. She and her husband Willie, tend a small traditional mixed croft on the West Mainland of Shetland, rearing Shetland kye, sheep and chickens as well as growing Shetland kale, tatties and as much of their own grazing and fodder as possible. Making use of all the produce that comes of their hard work on the croft entails a further workload that most of us simply would not contemplate. Yet for Pearl, this was the very lifestyle she missed while she was living away from Shetland, during the first years of her career as a staff-nurse.

When she and her family moved back to Shetland, what she wanted most was a piece of land and animals to tend. She had missed that sense of space, freedom and self-sufficiency that is still possible in Shetland. She also missed the flavours of her childhood and the connection crofting had given her to what was on her plate and how it was produced.

Setting up the filming for Taste of Shetland’s short film was an education in itself. Filmmakers Liz Musser and JJ Jamieson had to wait until Miriam the cow was ready to calve. Then we had to wait until the beest, or colostrum, cleared from the milk after the first couple of weeks. Then, and only then, could we set a date for capturing the all the processes that go into making traditional Shetland dairy produce.

When asked if she would be happy to teach others and pass on some of her wealth of knowledge, Pearl wrinkled her nose and asked “Well, who would want to learn? There is so much work involved. I can’t think there are many people who would want the bind of milking twice a day, just to make their own kirn milk!” I hadn’t realised that so much of what Pearl knows is impossible to replicate with commercially available milk. Yes, you can make your own butter with shop-bought cream, but many of the rest of the processes she shared are entirely dependent on having access to fresh, unpasteurised milk that has not been homogenised, with all the good bacteria still around to do the real work.

Of course, pasteurisation and homogenisation have made fresh milk easier to commercialise, safer and longer lasting but at the cost of all but losing the knowledge and traditions that Pearl and a select few are keeping alive.

After milking Miriam in the byre, Pearl took us back to her kitchen where she filtered the fresh milk and explained that we wouldn’t be using today’s milk to make the butter and kirn milk but something she called run milk. It is possible to make butter from fresh milk but to make Shetland kirn milk, a traditional farmhouse cheese, you firstly need to make run milk. To do this the raw, filtered milk is left to stand for three to four days, traditionally in a stoneware jar. When the milk is ‘run’ it will have a gelatinous set and tastes slightly acidic. It can be eaten at this stage as a yogurt-style dish.

Pearl then showed us her wooden butter churn, or kirn in dialect. She explained that the kirn has to be steeped in water to keep it water-tight and functional, as does the kirn-staff used for churning. She poured about 16 pints of run milk into the kirn and added extra cream skimmed from several jugs she had in the fridge. A little boiling water was then run down the sides of the kirn, enough to warm the milk to around 19°C. If the milk is too warm the butter will be very gloopy, if it’s too cold the churning will take far longer.

The kirn-staff is then plunged up and down in the milk with a downwards twisting motion, making a rhythmic whooshing sound. After 15-20 minutes the butter separates away from the buttermilk, collecting in a clotted creamy yellow mantle on top. It is done when the butter becomes one unified mass ‘clumping’ together. Pearl left the kirn to rest a while, allowing the buttermilk to settle, before scooping out the butter to wash it in several changes of fresh water; this removes any remaining buttermilk. Then the butter is salted and goes into the fridge to set a little, before it can be made into pats. Made in this way, with run milk, the butter has a tangier, slightly cheesy, edge to it and is great eaten with savoury dishes or spread thick on a hunk of Pearl’s fabulous homemade bread.

The next step was to use the remaining buttermilk to make kirn milk. Around 12 pints of boiling water were added to the kirn and after just a few more stokes of the kirn-staff, the curds separated from the whey and could then be removed by hand, squeezing out the whey and shaping handfuls of the curds into Kirnie brönies, or balls. Kirn milk can either be eaten warm with a dollop of rhubarb jam or left to cool and set in brönies to be eaten sliced as a firm fresh cheese. It is similar to a more solid cottage cheese in flavour, and is delicious eaten with or without the rhubarb jam.

Finally, what’s left in the kirn after removing all the curds is called blaand, a refreshing whey drink, which can be drunk straight from the kirn or bottled and left to ferment. Fermented blaand will be sparking and sharper in flavour. Traditionally it was taken as refreshing sustenance while working outdoors, in the peat hill or dellin’ da yerd.

The time I spent with Pearl gave me a fascinating insight into Shetland’s food heritage and the hard work, wealth of knowledge and dedication that goes into keeping these traditions alive. If, like me, you feel that cow ownership, calving and twice daily milking are a bit beyond you, read on for a much more accessible nod to our dairy heritage. Junket is a delicious, light dessert, that has been unfairly forgotten. It is laughably easy to make and hardly ever available commercially as it does not travel well. Making it has a lovely, intrepid, science-experiment feel to it.

It is a dessert that my mother made quite often when we were children, though hers was flavoured with a sprinkling of nutmeg rather than this slightly more decadent version. Junket with rose petals and cream features in Catherine Brown’s A year in a Scot’s Kitchen as a festive dish eaten around Beltain or midsummer. A scattering of shocking pink Shetland rose petals just before serving do make this quite a bucolic, pixieish affair. The Shetland rose, or rosa rugosa to give it its proper name, is a flower that shouts summer in Shetland. It’s incredibly hardy, spreads like wildfire, and has the most wonderfully fragrant blossom. If you can’t get fresh scented rose petals, crystallised petals are a good substitute.

The rennet you will need for this dish can be bought either in tablet form or as a liquid. It’s the same animal based coagulant enzyme used for cheese making and gives the milk a slightly gelatinous, custard-like set. You can buy it from any good chemist or order it online. Excellent vegetable based rennets are also available. Rennet strengths vary so check to see how much the manufacturer recommends for this quantity of milk. Good quality pasteurised milk is fine for this, but be careful to avoid any of the ultra heat treated milks available commercially as they will not set.