the cook's companion
A culinary milestone this morning - my first taste of unpasteurised milk.
I've been drinking 'ordinary' milk these past few weeks - trying to prepare my tastebuds for eventual student housing frugalities - a financially crippled state of taste where luxuries such as Organic Unhomogenised Full Cream Pleasure sourced from pamper-packed cows just isn't an option. I wake, weeping with fear, some nights, at the mere thought of International Roast instant coffee made up with UHT milk.
Anywho, this 'ordinary' milk actually goes way beyond any ordinary semantic definition of 'ordinary' - it's bleached, watery, unnaturally white (like dear darling Sammy's teeth) stuff, which, if it tastes of anything at all, more often than not it's a fairly foul herbal aftershock of lucerne. (Or perhaps silage - crack addled cows! - forget the gin, what's that doing to your liver?)
Dad bought some a certon (o! how quaint those cartons seem now, compared to horrid, clammy 2lt plastic bottles) of the Organic ambrosia yesterday and, after the first sip, I swear I cried a little on the inside - it's sweet, in a completely unartificial kind of a way; it's a delectable creamy-pale yellow colour, which totally satisfies my Victorian Country House Buttery yearnings (meet me in the dairy at midnight, milord); it has (and I'm well aware of how this turns most people of my aqquaintance off - needless to say, I adore it) little gobbets of cream bobbing within in, ready to be whipped into yellow butter and served in dainty glass dishes, or just poured into coffee (with or without the addition of almond essence or whiskey) where it forms the most marvellous faintly salty, melted sedimentary layer - like hot buttered rum, it just tastes like Winter.
It's creamy, clearly, but cleanly so - none of that revolting, gerasy mouthfeel you get after eating bad chips.
Unpasteurised milk is like that Organic stuff - a hundred fold. As Nathan Explosion might say... "Milkier than the milkiest milk. Times infinity!"
It was Jersey milk, which obviously helped - but it was still insanely good, and unlike anything I've ever tasted: it really is milkier than milk.
It's like... the archetype of milk. This theoretical idea of "milkiness" against which all milk is tested - the 2lt plastic stuff is 20% proof, the Organic is probably somewhere in the mid-eighties - which I had previously thought was as close to milk perfection as you could get, but no, this morning I supped upon the patron saint of Milk, St Jersey Jerome: a curiously pale man, with a fop of thich buttergold hair. Sweet guy.
Quite aside from all of that though, it's meant to be marvellously good for you - great colostrums, or something, I didn't quite catch what my dealer said. I like to think of it as - the epicurean equivalent of embryonic stem cells: magical little creatures, suspended like silica, who can do wonders beyond your wildest imaginings. Delicious!
I've been drinking 'ordinary' milk these past few weeks - trying to prepare my tastebuds for eventual student housing frugalities - a financially crippled state of taste where luxuries such as Organic Unhomogenised Full Cream Pleasure sourced from pamper-packed cows just isn't an option. I wake, weeping with fear, some nights, at the mere thought of International Roast instant coffee made up with UHT milk.
Anywho, this 'ordinary' milk actually goes way beyond any ordinary semantic definition of 'ordinary' - it's bleached, watery, unnaturally white (like dear darling Sammy's teeth) stuff, which, if it tastes of anything at all, more often than not it's a fairly foul herbal aftershock of lucerne. (Or perhaps silage - crack addled cows! - forget the gin, what's that doing to your liver?)
Dad bought some a certon (o! how quaint those cartons seem now, compared to horrid, clammy 2lt plastic bottles) of the Organic ambrosia yesterday and, after the first sip, I swear I cried a little on the inside - it's sweet, in a completely unartificial kind of a way; it's a delectable creamy-pale yellow colour, which totally satisfies my Victorian Country House Buttery yearnings (meet me in the dairy at midnight, milord); it has (and I'm well aware of how this turns most people of my aqquaintance off - needless to say, I adore it) little gobbets of cream bobbing within in, ready to be whipped into yellow butter and served in dainty glass dishes, or just poured into coffee (with or without the addition of almond essence or whiskey) where it forms the most marvellous faintly salty, melted sedimentary layer - like hot buttered rum, it just tastes like Winter.
It's creamy, clearly, but cleanly so - none of that revolting, gerasy mouthfeel you get after eating bad chips.
Unpasteurised milk is like that Organic stuff - a hundred fold. As Nathan Explosion might say... "Milkier than the milkiest milk. Times infinity!"
It was Jersey milk, which obviously helped - but it was still insanely good, and unlike anything I've ever tasted: it really is milkier than milk.
It's like... the archetype of milk. This theoretical idea of "milkiness" against which all milk is tested - the 2lt plastic stuff is 20% proof, the Organic is probably somewhere in the mid-eighties - which I had previously thought was as close to milk perfection as you could get, but no, this morning I supped upon the patron saint of Milk, St Jersey Jerome: a curiously pale man, with a fop of thich buttergold hair. Sweet guy.
Quite aside from all of that though, it's meant to be marvellously good for you - great colostrums, or something, I didn't quite catch what my dealer said. I like to think of it as - the epicurean equivalent of embryonic stem cells: magical little creatures, suspended like silica, who can do wonders beyond your wildest imaginings. Delicious!