Shortly after I met J-C he went to St Louis to do his military service. St Louis borders on Bale or Basel, (can't work out how to do accents on this blog) and is in the Les Vosges region, which I love. One day we went walking in the Les Vosges mountains, and travel-weary we came down to a temperate valley where a little farm advertised itself as a Ferme Auberge. This means a farm which serves food and sometimes offers a bed for the night depending on the farm. It was about four in the afternoon. We stooped to enter a dark oak-furnished room, and a shadowy farmer figure came out and asked us what we wanted. J-C had the presence of mind to order a bowl of hot chocolate. This bowl of hot chocolate still rings out in my memory. It spoke perfectly to the tiredness and cooling sweat. Never before had a hot chocolate been so delicious.
I have been trying to replicate this experience for 15 years but never again had occasion to stumble across a ferme auberge serving quite that chocolate. Yesterday I suddenly realised I have to do it myself, and I am proud to announced I've done it. Here's how:
Take some full-cream fresh Normandy farm milk and wait ages and ages until it boils, making a creaming bubbling froth on the top. While waiting take good quality cocoa put 2 tsps into a large cup or small bowl, and spend ages stirring it into a little cold milk until the surface tension releases. Add whole brown sugar to taste. Remove skin from milk and pour into bowl lovingly from a great height, aerating it and revelling in the bubbling steaming creaminess. Wait ages for it to cool. Enjoy.
When I was small my mother used to take me to Strathgade Farm at Potten End to buy milk fresh from the cow. They poured it into a machine and I watched it in the head-height plastic vat where it was cooled and stirred. I was allowed to order a strawberry milkshake made with it. In France you can still buy milk like that. My market sells unpasturised milk fresh from the cow. I know it's a risk, but being a French driver or pedestrian is a bigger one, and it doesn't stop me going out. I know the farm and I trust the suppliers. Which is more than you can say for the people who bought carefully regulated and highly treated baby milk with melamine in it.
Isn't this beautiful? What is it? It's another way of seeing unpasturised milk. It is a photograph of 'sensitive crystallisation', the effect of unpasturised milk on copper chloride. The basic idea is that there are crystallisation patterns which indicate the true quality of food -as it relates to us humans in need of proper nourishment. The site below is the best explanation I can find of the background, theory and experiments. I wish other people on the net, particularly those associated with wine, would read this before making their comments. I'm going to have more to say about this subject, please ask me questions. I'm probably going to have to start with Sir Jagadis Chandra Bose, Hooray for Sir Jagadis Chandra Bose, a noble scientist, I love him!
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