Yellow Fever
Blog Entry: Friday 14 Aug 2009
Christopher Hirst reports on why real butter is back on Britain’s shopping lists: ‘Butter tastes incomparably superior to margarine and spreads. Only those rigidly set in their habits or with bizarrely undiscriminating palates would deliberately choose the artificially concocted taste of manufactured spreads over the natural, rich flavour of butter.’
‘Butter is one of the great culinary treats,’ he continues. ‘No wonder our top chefs, people whose business is pleasure, use it with abandon. Butter is mandatory when making polenta and risotto. Spiked with capers, melted butter is a simple, perfect sauce for grilled fish, or, flecked with fragments of fresh-torn sage, for pasta parcels such as pumpkin-stuffed tortellini.’
And just to make sure your mouth is watering, Hirst insists: ‘Only butter will do as a foundation for hollandaise and other sauces. Croissants made with butter are streets ahead of more economic versions. For seed cake, tarte tatin or shortbread, butter is of the essence. Brown shrimps or crab potted under mace-infused butter are two of the greatest pleasures in English cuisine. And what else goes with a fresh-boiled ear of sweetcorn? There is little to beat hot buttered toast by itself, though some prefer the butter-filled pores of crumpets.’
Read Christopher Hirst’s full article ‘Yellow Fever’ at the Independent Online, which also includes recipes for butterlicious scrambled eggs and lemon sole with caper butter.
Leave a reply