u/Open_Connection2528

I'm looking to make crema and I quite fancy the option 1 from Rick Bayless's suggestions. However. I have some questions:

1. I'm not sure if I'll manage to find ultra-pasteurised double cream as I live in Scotland where raw milk is banned. I'm hoping that the cultured buttermilk is more important to the recipe?

2. I also don't know if I'll be able to find cultured buttermilk so I was planning to make this Serious Eat's recipe for cultured buttermilk. It recommends either regular shop-bought or cultured starter. I'm thinking of buying some starter here to use but what's the difference between using shop-bought versus the starter culture? Will it just taste more complex when using starter culture? If I were to follow the recipe 2 or 3 times with shop-bought buttermilk, would it eventually develop towards a result as if I'd used starter culture ie. I'd end up with my own, comparable buttermilk starter culture?

3. Both recipes involve fermenting for around 12-18 hours so I'll be following a similar process twice. What does making a cultured buttermilk first and then using to make the crema achieve if it's roughly the same process. Am I just building up flavour/complexity/fermentation by doing this process twice.

Thanks

I recently made this Crab Pasta (recipe below) but was disappointed in my execution of the sauce. I doubled the portion so I used 400ml Crab Bisque which I placed over a medium heat for a couple of minutes before whisking in 22.5g cold, cubed butter. I then added my fresh pasta which I had cooked for around 2 minutes as well as roughly 100ml pasta water. I stirred this together and whisked in another 22.5g cold, cubed butter. However, after this the sauce was still very thin so I had to remove the pasta to continue reducing the sauce and then add the pasta back in later. Overall, the sauce turned out quite thin and didn't coat the pasta.

I think my two issues were: 1. not reducing the bisque enough before whisking in the first lot of butter. 2. I had originally set aside 300g fresh pasta to use as 2 portions but this was evidently far, far too much, so I went with 150g instead, but I think this still would have been too much, given that I think the solution is to reduce the bisque down a lot. If I were to make it again I'd probably think to use around 75-100g fresh pasta for 2 portions (in other words, that would mean 37.5-50g used in the video, but that seems like a very small portion! However, maybe that's what is required to get a ore flavourful sauce:pasta ratio and to make it easier to thicken the sauce properly).

Is there anything else to consider? Perhaps the pasta water they used was from the restaurant ie. had built-up starch?

Bonus question: The farfalline pasta collapsed a bit after cooking. I'm thinking of making them smaller next time and dry them for a few hours rather than using them immeidately. is there anything else I should consider?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxerlTnW84M - watch at 3:55 for the consistency of the sauce.