SnackBar
People often discuss the ethics and humane treatment of killing animals for their meat, but the guilt and queasiness rarely spills over to the matter of dairy. Upon reflection, what sick mind came up with the idea of separating a nursing mother from her offspring to commandeer her milk for human sustenance – gives a new meaning to taking candy from a baby. It’s classic Homo sapiens: brilliant, devious, and not just a little callous. The existence of dairy farming is evidence enough that life in this world is pretty strange and desperate, not to mention mind-blowingly rich and creamy.
The idea and idyll of dairy farming may begin to fade in charm, but its impact on the trajectory of human physiology and civilization as we know it is ineffaceable. About 10,000 years ago, just as dairy farming was reaching maturity, the ability of humans to digest milk beyond infancy spread through European populations in a blink on the evolutionary time scale. The increase in accessibility and digestibility of animal milk (primarily from cows, sheep, and goats) contributed to the growth of human population and the average height. Without milk, human achievements like NYC and the NBA would hardly be conceivable.
However, the idea of enjoying milk in the era of mass-production and ultra-pasteurization is also hard to swallow (just to be clear: pasteurization saves lives; ultra-pasteurization destroys taste). The extensive processing of drinking milk is a fairly recent practice, and up until the mid-1800s, it was still common in France to “have the child suckle directly from an animal’s teat.”1 Plopping the baby under a cow makes for a rather funny picture, but it is no more bizarre than the vacuum tubing that dairy cows are rigged up to these days. In fact, the image of the human baby suckling on the milk of a non-human nurse is central to the founding myths of many Western civilizations and cultures – from Enkidu of Mesopotamian legend to Romulus and Remus of the mythological origins of Rome. Almighty Zeus himself was suckled on the milk of Amalthea, a most tender nanny goat whom he later skinned for a stole and immortalized among the stars as compensation. Pastoral philosophy is ever pragmatic: waste not. Though the real moral of Zeus’s upbringing may be that goat’s milk is pretty good, good enough for the Father of Gods anyway.
Goat milk is indeed tasty, but my dairy habits tend more towards gamey goat cheese, snow-white goat butter, thick goat yogurt, and the truly divine: goat milk ice cream. Certain benefits of goat milk have been increasingly publicized as part of the organic and raw food movement, some of which are theoretically true, some have yet to be thoroughly tested, while others are mostly wishful thinking. Yet the fact that goat products occupy such a niche market in the U.S. does allow goat dairy operations to minimize many of the complications that arise from the scaling up, such as hormone treatment, over-milking, and all the things that people don’t want to think about when having breakfast. Attested virtues of goat milk biological and mythological aside, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Goat butter makes amazingly tender biscuits with whether savory (with rosemary) or sweet (with honey – another food of the gods). Goat ice cream is the ultimate treat, but goat caramel isn’t shabby either, and they’re easier to make at home – just use goat butter instead of regular butter. The trickier part is substituting out the heavy cream for goat yogurt or goat milk. More experimentation is required, though maybe that’s just an excuse to make more candy.
1 Stevens EE, Patrick TE, Pickler R. A History of Infant Feeding. Journal of Perinatal Education. 2009 Spring; 18(2): 32–39.f
If you have any comments, questions or other tasty (or morbid) tidbits, contact DuanDuan at SnackBar.Kitchen@gmail.com.
Salted Goat Caramel
Ingredients
5 tablespoons goat butter
3/4 cup heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup glucose
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon sea salt, for sprinkling
Method
- Line a 9-inch loaf pan with parchment paper.
- Bring 3 tablespoons butter, cream, salt, and vanilla to a boil over medium-high heat. Remove from heat and cover to keep warm.
- In another pan, heat sugar and glucose to 310°F. Stir mixture to make sure sugar melts evenly, but once melted, stir only minimally to prevent burning.
- Turn off heat. Stir in warm butter mixture. Reheat to 260°F.
- Remove from heat. Stir in remaining butter (cut into cubes) until mixture is silky smooth.
- Pour into lined pan and let cool at room temperature for 10 minutes. Sprinkle on sea salt. Let cool completely before cutting into squares. Better use a sharp knife.
- To store, wrap in wax paper and keep in air-tight container at room temperature.
