Did I mention that I've been drinking raw milk for some time now?
It's so delicious, I have to ration myself.
I've been buying milk fro Hook and Sons (the chap who was featured in the film The Moo Man), driving to Chiswick Market every few weeks and buying in bulk. Fortunately, it's freezable with relatively little loss of quality.
If we were in his rounds area, we'd pay 95p per pint. I pay my milkman 85p per pint for pasteurised homogenised organic milk, and I'd happily pay 95p for the quality of raw milk.
However, I'm not in the rounds area, so my choices are to either get it posted, which isn't cheap, or to go to a farmers market. Luckily, they sell at Chiswick, which is this side of London at least.
Then I was contacted by an alternative supplier from Lancashire. Their milk was really well rated, and their price was much cheaper per litre (£2ish rather than £3). Actually, I should point out here that Hook and Sons was in 2 pint bottled, which is 1.1 litres. I worked out that if I ordered the maximum number of bottles, even with postage it would still work out cheaper than buying the same number of bottles at Chiswick. I gave it a try.
It
arrived in superb condition, really well packed with wool insulation.
It tasted OK, but I would swear it wasn't quite as proper-milk-tasting
as the Hook and Sons (H&S) milk I'd had before. (I also ordered some cheese at the same time, and I can say the cheese was delicious).
Maybe I was just getting used to the taste of real milk, and not noticing it so much?
I
froze most of it. Like the H&S milk, it's a little bitty when
defrosted, but it doesn't impact the flavour (as far as I can tell). A quick shake and the bits disappear temporarily anyway.
I
did notice that the new milk frothed well for our morning flat whites,
which surprised me. The H&S milk doesn't, and there is a
biological reason for this, same reason that the yoghurt made with
H&S milk is runnier than that made with pasteurised and homogenised
milk.
It
was very pleasant to be able to have frothy raw milk - but I had
thought it wasn't really possible. I checked the poly bottles to make
sure it really was raw milk, and it was.
Maybe it's just because it's a different breed of cow?
I'm
down to my last few bottles in the freezer. I decided to get some more
Hook and Son milk this time, and to try and do a taste test while i have
both. I couldn't face driving over to Chiswick Market yesterday, so I
placed an online order.
We'll see.
