Since my trip to France when I was 16, I haven’t been much of a milk drinker. Prior to that trip, I loved milk and would guzzle it down by the glassful with any meal. But in France, the milk was, well, different—warm, thick, a bit off-tasting. I guess it kind of tempered my enthusiasm for the drink, especially when served “straight up." But even though I now prefer a glass of red wine with my dinner and soy in my coffee, there sure is nothing that quite beats a glass of cold milk with something gooey and chocolatey. Mmmm… brownies.
So, the raw milk that I bought at the market from Sea Breeze Farms turned out to be a perfect excuse to make rich, decadent, brownies! Raw milk is something I’ve been curious about for awhile now, but my knowledge about it was fairly limited. I knew that it was unpasteurized milk and that consequently the health risks were much greater than with pasteurized milk. But when I recently read an article in Seattle Magazine about a local producer of raw milk, it suddenly made so much sense to me to drink “real” milk. Like all other things American, our government has spent the past several decades trying to protect us from our own stupidity, our own carelessness. People drank milk straight from cows for centuries, and suffered no ills. But suddenly dairy farms got big, farmers got sloppy, and people got sick.
However, smart dairy farming is back. Some farmers are now taking better care of their cows and more precautions with their processing methods. As a result, many small dairy operations, such as Sea Breeze Farms, are now selling "r
eal" milk once again. Raw milk costs quite a bit more than its pasteurized counterpart because the licensing requirements are apparently extremely rigid and require lots of expensive equipment for cooling and cleaning. But if you're someone like me who only drinks milk in their coffee or with the occasional brownie, the overall cost is nominal. With that in mind however, the flavor and quality of the milk did not blow me away. I guess I expected it to taste different from the normal grocery store variety, somehow thicker and richer. It wasn't. The consistency was the same and I could only detect a slight richness in the flavor when I really looked for it, and what uniqueness there was certainly didn't stand up to the chocolate. However, despite the similarities in taste, I know that by buying "real" milk I am supporting not only one farmer, but also an entire philosophy of raising animals. For that reason, I will continue to buy my one small carton of raw milk every so often. Well, that and it goes well with brownies.Cherry-Chunk Fudge Brownies
1/2 cup (1 stick) plus 2 Tbsp. unsalted butter
5 oz. bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
2/3 cup flour
1 1/2 Tbsp. cocoa powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
3 large eggs
2 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/3 cup dried cherries
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8-inch square baking pan.
Melt the chocolate and butter together over a double boiler or in the microwave, using low heat and stirring frequently. Set aside to cool.
In a small bowl, stir together the flour, cocoa powder, and salt. Mix both sugars into the melted chocolate mixture. Whisk in the eggs, then add the vanilla. Add the flour mixture to the chocolate and stir until just combined; add the chocolate chips and cherries, then turn out the batter into the prepared pan.
Bake for about 30-35 minutes, or until the center feels firm and a toothpick inserted into the sides comes out clean (the center should still be moist). Allow to cool completely before serving.
(This recipe is adapted from Nancy Baggett's book The All-American Cookie Book.)
2 comments:
FMF: "Like all other things American, our government has spent the past several decades trying to protect us from our own stupidity, our own carelessness. People drank milk straight from cows for centuries, and suffered no ills. But suddenly dairy farms got big, farmers got sloppy, and people got sick."
Raw milk spreads diseases from cows to animals that drink the milk. Take bovine TB. That disease was essentially eliminated via pasteurization in the USA and other advanced countries.
In Mexico they've got a lot of backyard animal keeping. You'd call that "small farming". Yet that goes hand in hand with things like TB, hoof and mouth disease and other awful diseases that have essentially been eliminated in the USA by practices like pasteurization.
Now that Mexicans smuggle in cheese from Mexico, made from the raw milk of infected cows, we see outbreaks of bovine TB in the USA.
Those diseases are serious- the remedy is typically to kill all exposed mammals (excluding humans). When you see anials with the disease, you know some farmers (big or small) will be going broke.
FMF: "Raw milk costs quite a bit more than its pasteurized counterpart because the licensing requirements are apparently extremely rigid and require lots of expensive equipment for cooling and cleaning."
Raw milk costs a lot because the farmers that make it can charge that price and still sell their milk. Farmers (and other businessmen) charge whatever they can get away with.
True (to the original blog entry) - raw milk tastes pretty much like regular milk. We had raw milk for the first time yesterday and we prayed to god several times to protect us from any possible infections. We are okay so far :) But the milk itself tasted like any other milk. We had milk with chocolate too, and had the same experience that chocolate dominated the taste. We'll be trying raw milk on my wife's mom who's had some lactose intolerance lately. Waiting to see if "real milk" gets rid of this problem :)
(btw, I seem to have posted this reponse earlier into the wrong blog post - sorry about that.)
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