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tasty butter
(vegetarian)
recipe by mb
what I was looking for
I got a large, beautiful fillet of salmon for dinner and was looking for a new and interesting way of flavoring it; something that was easy to prepare but would make the salmon pop.
what I made
For something simple and flavorful like this, Alice Waters is always the right person to turn to. Because The Art of Simple Food is our book of the month I've been flipping through it on a regular basis. I flipped to the sauces section and came upon a recipe for herb butter (pg. 48), which I then changed to make it . . . perfect.
chit-chat
Let me say three very quick things about this recipe.
1) Make it. It's easy and simple and delicious.
2) If there had been a loaf of crusty Italian bread in the house then none of this butter would have made it anywhere close to the table. I would have eaten it all without letting anyone else even look at it because it is really, really, really good.
3) This recipe is the soul of flexibility. You could add anything to butter and it would taste good. So go ahead and experiment! I think my next version is going to have cinnamon and sugar in it.
grades for my version
| healthy | D | It's pretty much nothing but butter. |
| fast | A | Start to finish it took less than 5 minutes. |
| easy | A- | Mincing a shallot isn't the easiest thing in the world, but this recipe can also be made by putting the shallot into the food processor or blender or cutting it into big chunks. There's a lot of flexibility here. |
| cheap | A | The way I made it? Yes, indeedy. |
| delicious | A | Scrum-diddly-umptious. |
yield
Makes about ¾ cup.
equipment
a medium-sized bowl
a microwave
a sharp knife
a garlic press
a spoon or spatula
the heart
| ingredients | Alice | mb | why? |
| butter | ½ cup (1 stick) | ½ cup (1 stick) | no change |
Take the butter out of its paper wrapper and stick it into the bowl. Place the bowl in the microwave
and nuke it until the butter's just softened (still mostly retaining its shape, but no longer firm).
In my
microwave this was 15 seconds on high, let it rest for a moment, and then another 15 seconds on high.
the soul
| ingredients | Alice | mb | why? |
| chopped herbs | ½ cup | --- | cheaper |
| shallots | --- | 1, finely chopped | tastier [1] |
| garlic | 1 clove, chopped | 2 cloves, crushed | tastier, easier |
| citrus juice | 1 squeeze of lemon juice |
juice of 1 lime | tastier [2] |
| salt | to taste | to taste | no change |
| black pepper | to taste | to taste | no change |
| cayenne pepper | a pinch | a pinch | no change |
| Notes | |||
| [1] | I'm sort of using the shallots as a replacement for the fresh herbs here. I didn't want to go out and buy a bunch of fresh herbs, but I also didn't want to miss out on the depth of flavor they'd provide, so I decided to mince a shallot and use that instead. | ||
| [2] | My poor husband gets upset when I use lemon juice too often, so I have to mix it up and use lime juice instead. Doesn't mean that I'm going to cut back on the sourness though, as you can see by the fact that I used the juice of an entire lime! | ||
Mince the shallot up finely and add it to the bowl. Then crush the garlic and add it to the bowl. Squeeze
in the lime juice, add the salt and pepper and cayenne, and stir until everything is incorporated in the
butter.
Taste and add more salt or pepper or lime juice as you think it's needed.
Here are a couple of suggestions for how to use/serve this butter
- over freshly baked fish right out of the oven
- with toast
- in scrambled eggs
- fry tofu in it
- put it in a pretty jar and give it away as a gift
- as filling in an omelet
- inside of chicken kiev
- use your finger and scoop it up
Questions? Comments? Corrections?
Suggestions? Contributions?
Please let us know!
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