Dylan and Wal, both incarcerated in New Zealand for methamphetamine production and related crimes, languished behind prison walls. Inside his cell, Wal watches the TV show The River Cottage, a program about old fashioned cooking. The episode airing is about making yoghurt from scratch. Wal gets excited and invites Dylan to their next racket. Tomorrow, he says, they're going to cook.
Radio New Zealand details an amazing story of how to men behind bars secretly produce yoghurt, share their knowledge with other prisoners, and even smuggle yoghurt cultures between prisons. Dylan and Wal improvised their lab using resources available to them:
With no thermometer available, the pair take turns testing the heat with their fingertips. When it is scalding, Dylan finds it “burns like tear gas”. And so they wait. When it cools to just above tepid, Wal adds the whole punnet of yoghurt, not realising that just a smear of culture is enough to alter a whole batch of milk.
They take their concoction back to their cells, where two thick hot water pipes run in parallel lines across the rear wall of the 3m by 2m units. Wal wraps the carton in a t-shirt,wedges it between the pipes, and waits.
That night, with the temperature dropping close to zero, Wal worries about whether the life beginning in the carton on the pipes behind his head will survive. Through the quiet dark hours, he checks on it periodically and tenderly, as if it were a newborn baby.
As morning breaks, he unwraps his creation. Inside the carton, the once thin milk is as thick and creamy, as sweet and delicious as any yoghurt plucked from a supermarket shelf. He is astonished.
Radio New Zealand also produced a web series that introduces the audience to Dylan and Wal, as well as their secrets of yoghurt production.
-via Marginal Revolution | Photo: RNZ