As Arla Foods Company announces trials of Bovaer, a feed additive purporting to reduce cow's methane emissions, a baking session showcasing unhomogenized Jersey Gold Top Milk is timely.
One can go to several places when talking about Bovaer, but let’s stick with the benefits of natural milk.
Graham’s The Family Dairy has a Christmas campaign #makeitagoldchristmas to showcase Jersey Gold Top Milk.
Unhomogenised, means the fat is allowed to settle at the top of the bottle rather than being dispersed throughout the milk, giving you natural cream to enjoy. It also dispenses with one layer of processing. The milk is the product of a herd of Windsor cows, ‘The Golden Girls’, that graze on pasture, which they ferment in their stomachs. All the goodness of minerals and vitamins is retained, resulting in milk high in fat, protein, and calcium.
We are at the Edinburgh New Town Cookery School, (Christmas gift alert), under the careful eye of Chef Fiona to learn why Jersey Gold Top Milk is great for Christmas cooking. A festive clafoutis, bread and butter pudding and custard put this proposition to the test.
This domestic science habitat soon leads to rounds of weighing, mixing, beating, whisking, boiling and other scary things that make me feel I am on GBBO and possibly publicly failing. But the creamy viscosity of the Gold Top covers many of my failings and the results are delicious.
The baked, creamy batter of the clafoutis is rich, and the aromatic whisky custard is the best I’ve had. Ditto for the bread and butter pudding.
Pasture is all cows need to turn grass into one of the most nutritious and delicious foods. Seaweed can reduce cow methane, but grazing cows already regenerate the soil with their hooves churning it and providing insects and worms for other animals and birds to feed on. Cows provide free manure, making grass grow and creating a natural carbon store. Factory farming has high water grain costs and carbon emissions. Cows are stewards of our land. Dr Graham says, "Happy cows make happy milk."
So we say, support our dairy farmers and their produce and if you are baking, by all means, make it a gold Christmas.
