The magic of milk: Matthew Evans on the original superfood

The milk churn sits on the bench. It holds 10 litres (or 2 gallons) of luscious, golden-tinged milk. I enticed it from Myrtle, my Jersey cow, at dawn yesterday and rested it in the fridge overnight. The oozy cream that has risen to the surface is easily plucked off the top with the lazy swirl of a ladle and the judicious use of a spatula.

I hold in my hand the fat of the land.

Yesterday I used a litre of this milk to make yoghurt. I heated it in a pan until soft cappuccino-like bubbles appeared at the edges, and then I stirred it often as it sat, just below a simmer, for a quarter of an hour. Long, slow heat changes the milk, making my yoghurt thicker, richer, more densely textured, and hence fuller flavoured. I took the saucepan from the flame to cool it, to just above body temperature.

This natural yoghurt is a living thing; the yeasts and bacteria essential to set and flavour it need warmth to thrive.

I whisked in a tablespoon of a previous batch of yoghurt, inoculating the milk with the good bacteria found in natural curd, then poured it into a glass jar and insulated it in a small cooler box.

The milk then sat on the bench for eight hours, after which it had set firm - though not as firm as it will become over the next week in the fridge. When I dig my spoon into it, my yoghurt will weep a type of whey, greenish in hue.

Today, I want to use this yoghurt to culture an overabundance of cream. I warm the cream, too, like the previous day's milk, but only to the temperature of my blood. Body temperature is perfect for living things, and heating the cream further right now will change its flavour and its living flora in ways I don't desire.

I add a tablespoon of yesterday's yoghurt to the cream, whisk briefly, then pour it into a jar to ferment for the next few hours. I'm making soured cream, or crème frache in French. It could find a use on tacos, in cake, over baked potatoes ... but this batch I'll clot.

Once soured, it'll be gently heated in a wide tray in a low oven until it sets and has a crust on top. Clotted cream is a culinary thing of beauty; the combination of one of nature's gifts (cream), controlled rot (bacteria and yeasts) and human ingenuity (heat).

Cracking through the caramelised skin to the dreamy sunset-yellow mousse below is one of the joys of milking a cow and being a cook. This masterful concoction will grace my porridge, my scones. I might even make a batch of ice cream from it.

Three days ago, this cream was grass. And that blows my mind. In a day's time, the milk underneath the cream, which still holds quite a bit of the fat thanks to my low-tech skimming, that milk will be feta cheese.

A tablespoon of the whey drained from that cheesemaking will be used to speed up the ferment of my sourdough bread. The rest of the whey will be used to make ricotta. Meanwhile, today's milk will be skimmed tomorrow to make butter, which will shamelessly slather that bread.

Welcome to the miracle of dairy. My book, Milk, was born out of my love of what comes from a cow. But it's also a celebration of all the milky goodness in the world. Goat's curd. Basque sheep milk cheese. Milkshakes. Breastmilk. Old-fashioned sherbets. Cultured butter. Cheesecake. Even almond milk, when it's made right.

When I say the word "milk", you probably think first of cow's milk. This usually white liquid can appear deceptively plain and innocuous. It can come across as dull, because it's so ubiquitous; you can buy it everywhere, all the time, and it's often cheaper than bottled water.

You can "keep a cow in the cupboard" with powdered milk that lasts for years, or hoard a stash of UHT - the ultra-heattreated milk that can be stored out of the fridge for months prior to opening.

While many of us only think about milk when we're pouring it on our cornflakes, it's also the stuff of international commodity markets, multinational processing companies, and aggressive anti-dairy campaigns.

Milk was used by the temperance movement to prevent immoral and excessive behaviour, while glugging milk straight from the bottle has even been used as a symbol of anti-Semitism.

Even human breastmilk - the original milk for us - has been fashionable and not, and is traded on the black market, the focus of body-builders and fetishists.

How we see milk, in all its guises, has changed over the centuries, from hero to villain, lambasted or revered - driven by fashion, fanaticism and finances.

I know not everyone loves milk as I do. Some see the subjugation of a cow, any animal, as a form of modern slavery, a practice they suggest humanity will abhor in generations to come.

Some can't drink milk. Won't drink milk. Don't drink milk, for physical or religious or philosophical reasons. And that's fine, as adults. But many do drink it.

It's believed three-quarters of the world's people get a substantial nutritional benefit from the milk of species not our own.

This can seem odd at a time when we're told that cows are causing climate change, that we don't need a diet containing animal products to have complete nutrition, and that plant-based eating has the lowest footprint on Mother Earth.

With so many new "milks" appearing on the market, my aim in my book is to talk about what milk is - to unpick what is good, and bad, and perhaps not yet widely known, about drinking the milk from humans and other animals, as well as the substitutes made from plants, so we can appreciate whether we should drink it at all. Milk's place in our history, in our culture and on our tables, has always been controversial.

This is an edited extract from Milk by Matthew Evans. Murdoch Books. $34.99.