Milk (45 page)

M
y idea of what to cook in simple clarified butter would be Wienerschnitzel or a large mess of pan-fried trout—large enough that nonclarified butter might be starting to burn by the time you’d finished.

Making up a batch is an education in the vagaries of butter. Starting with a pound of butter, you may end up with more than 14 ounces or as little as 12 ounces of clarified butter, depending on the amount of water and milk solids that were in the butter before clarifying. High-fat, low-moisture butter (83 percent or higher butterfat content, by weight) will give a higher yield than the more usual 80 to 81 percent American butter.

Be sure not to discard the buttermilk residue left from the process! It is quite perishable but absolutely delicious (particularly that from cultured butter), and can be saved in small amounts in the freezer until you have enough to use as a seasoning on vegetables, add to sauces as a flavor enhancer, or put into a batch of bread dough. (
Madeleine Kamman’s
When French Women Cook
has a wonderful walnut-oil bread using the buttermilk residue from clarified butter—
gape
or
gappe,
as churned buttermilk is known in the Auvergne.)

YIELD:
Highly variable, but generally about 14 to 15 ounces (slightly less than 2 cups) per original pound

Use only unsalted butter. A pound or half a pound is the most convenient-sized batch to experiment with, but you can use any preferred amount. If you are starting with a pound or less, use a 2- to 3-quart saucepan. Pouring off the clear butterfat will be easier if it is narrow rather than wide. The bottom must be heavy enough to diffuse heat well without scorching.

Have ready a heatproof storage container for the clarified butter, a smaller one for the buttermilk residue, and a small spoon for skimming. Cut the butter into chunks of 1 tablespoon or less and place it in the saucepan over medium-low heat. Watch as it melts. It must not reach a sizzle; reduce the heat if necessary. Do not shake or stir it. As it fully melts, some crinkly-looking foam (mostly water-soluble whey proteins) may swim to the top. Carefully skim this off into your smaller container, trying to disturb the butter as little as possible. Remove the pan from the heat and let it stand a few minutes, to allow the buttermilk residue to separate from the lighter butterfat by gravity.

Slowly pour the clear golden butterfat into the larger container, being sure to stop before any of the cloudy white liquid at the bottom gets into it. Spoon
off as much more of the clear fat as you can. Obsessive types can salvage the last smidgin of clarified butter by pouring what’s left into a small cup, refrigerating it until it solidifies into a cake, and scraping the buttermilk residue off the bottom with a knife.

The clarified butter should be stored, tightly covered, in a cool place or the refrigerator. It keeps for months. Add all remaining buttermilk leavings to the container with the skimmed foam and freeze, tightly covered.

Some people clarify butter in the oven. To do this, put the butter in a heatproof glass measuring cup and place it in a preheated 225°F oven until melted. Continue as directed above.

T
his is the
usli ghee
(Hindi for “pure ghee”) long held holy in Hindu thought, as opposed to the partially hydrogenated vegetable-oil substitute called
vanaspati ghee
(“plant ghee”) that is now overtaking it in sales as attachment to former dietary observance weakens in much of India. The special status of real ghee reflected the belief that it had undergone two kinds of refining or subliming process. The cow herself performed the first by distilling milk for butter out of the grasses of the earth; people completed the second by subjecting churned butter to the purifying medium of fire.

In contrast to simple clarified butter, ghee is simmered for a long time to bring out complex flavors that never develop in the briefly melted kind. Once you become familiar with its heavenly toasted aroma and flavor, you may fall in love with it much as many American cooks have fallen in love with things like Vietnamese fish sauce, smoked Spanish paprika, and toasted sesame oil.

Before you begin, please remember that different kinds of butter vary greatly in water content. This makes it difficult to predict the total cooking time for ghee. I’ve seen recipes blithely estimating less than fifteen minutes; all I can say is that it usually takes me between forty minutes and an hour. The exact yield also will vary. To partly duplicate some of the lactic-acid flavor that churned sour milk imparts to Indian ghee, try to use butter from cultured cream. It’s best to start with at least a pound of butter—unsalted only.

YIELD:
About 12 to 14 ounces (slightly more than 1⅞ cups) per original pound

Have ready a heatproof storage container for the clarified ghee, a smaller one for the buttermilk residue, a small spoon for skimming, and a small strainer lined with several layers of
tight-woven
cheesecloth or a clean cotton handkerchief, set over a small heatproof bowl.

Cut the butter into chunks of about a tablespoon each, and melt it in a heavy-bottomed 2- or 3-quart saucepan over low heat. It must melt evenly so that part isn’t sizzling while the rest is still solid; shake the pan to even things out if necessary. When it is fully melted, you can increase the heat slightly, but it should never be higher than medium-low. The butter will crackle and sputter as the watery part starts to evaporate. Carefully skim off as much of the rising foam as you can into the smaller container, and push the rest to one side so that you can see the color of the butter.

The pan can now mind its own business for between 30 minutes and an hour (depending on the amount of water to be driven off), but you must keep checking it at frequent intervals. Gradually the butterfat will become clearer as the water evaporates and the temperature rises; the bubbling and hissing will subside, and you will see the milky residue forming into clumps on the bottom. This must not be allowed to burn; if it becomes darker than golden brown, the ghee will taste scorched. If you see it darkening too fast, briefly remove the pan from the burner and lower the heat before resuming. Eventually the butterfat will be deep golden and have a ripe, walnutlike smell. Set it aside to cool slightly before proceeding.

Carefully pour off and spoon the clear ghee into the larger container. When you’re down to the last bit that you can get, strain the rest through the cheesecloth and scrape all the leavings into the container with the skimmed foam. (Save this in the freezer as for the residues from European-style clarified butter. It will taste even better because of the lengthy browning process.) Let the ghee cool to room temperature before covering tightly. It will keep at least six months in the refrigerator, indefinitely in the freezer.

T
he European-style flavored butters discussed on
this page
place the flavoring ingredients (lemon juice, chives, parsley, anchovies, or whatnot) in strong perspective against the pure, creamy butter vehicle. In much of northern Africa and the Mideast, people have adopted different approaches. Ethiopian
nit’r kibeh
(there are various English transliterations from Amharic) exemplifies one of these. You begin by simmering the butter with various spices and flavorings. In the process, you cook out both the perishable
and the creamy qualities, while the strong flavors of many different ingredients fuse into a subtle bouquet that registers less immediately on the palate than the warm, nutty fullness of the transformed butter. What remains when the aromatics are strained out is one of the world’s finest cooking fats, as rich-flavored as ghee but with other elusive complexities.

In Ethiopia nit’r kibeh is a favorite sautéing or braising medium for a wide variety of meat, chicken, and vegetable dishes, and serves as a sauce or dressing for
k’itfo t’re,
the celebrated national counterpart of steak tartare. Among the usual constellation of flavorings, black or “false” cardamom (the pungent
Aframomum korarima
),
ajowan
(
Trachyspermum ammi;
also called bishop’s weed or carom), and fenugreek are available in Indian grocery stores. If you are unable to obtain one or two of the ingredients, simply leave them out; the butter will still have plenty of flavor. If you can find fresh turmeric (also sold in Indian groceries), use a nickel-sized slice, minced, in place of dried ground turmeric.

The recipe can be halved, though I find it easier to make at least a 2-cup batch.

YIELD:
About 2 cups

Melt the butter over medium-low heat in a small heavy saucepan. When it is hot and fragrant and the sizzling begins to subside, add all the remaining ingredients. Reduce the heat to very low and cook, uncovered, for 45 to 60 minutes, until the shallots and ginger have stopped bubbling and there is a layer of clear golden fat on top. If necessary, push any rising foam to the side so that you can see the butter; do not let the aromatics brown.

Let the nit’r kibeh cool slightly. Place a colander lined with
tight-woven
cheesecloth or a clean cotton handkerchief over a heatproof bowl; pour the contents of the pan into it, letting the clarified fat drain through. Strain twice
if necessary to eliminate any cloudy sediment, which would shorten the keeping time. Discard the residue. Transfer to storage containers and let cool to room temperature before refrigerating; store, tightly covered, in the refrigerator. It will keep for four to six months.

D
espite its usual name, beurre manié, or “
kneaded butter,” is not an exclusively French invention. It was perfectly at home in nineteenth-century American kitchens, where people often called it “braided butter.” It isn’t a sauce in itself but a variation of the same principle—fat plus flour—that thickens
roux-based sauces. In both cases the fat protectively coats the separate flour granules so that they will not coalesce into a sticky mass as soon as they meet some hot liquid ingredient. This allows them to gradually soften (by absorption of water) on exposure to heat and progressively release their starch into the liquid. Result: binding of a sauce.

The main difference is that in a beurre manié the flour starts out with a coating of more or less cool, solid butter, whereas in a roux the fat is already liquefied and heating up fast. Melt butter for a roux and add flour, and the mixture quickly reaches temperatures higher than the boiling point of water. But the flour and butter for a beurre manié are worked together off the heat and added to a simmering liquid, meaning that the temperature never will go above 212°F. The flour-fat mixture undergoes a nuanced melting and melding before the butter becomes fully liquefied. Thus the flour granules can first absorb liquid and then release starch into a sauce in gentle stages. In a roux-based sauce, by contrast, the amalgamation of flour and (already heated) fat happens more abruptly, and by the time the liquid is added more of the butter’s original qualities have been lost. There is the further wrinkle that flour cooked at high temperatures loses more of its thickening power than at low temperatures, so that a certain amount of flour will thicken a certain amount of liquid more in a beurre manié than in a roux.

There is no use trying to reduce a beurre manié to a set of recipe directions, but this is the gist of the process: Put equal amounts of flour and butter (by volume—say, 4 tablespoons each) on a plate or clean work surface. The butter should be very little softened, if at
all. The softer and easier to work it is, the likelier the mixture is to be borderline greasy before you add it to any would-be sauce.

With the tines of a fork, patiently mash the flour into the butter until no loose flour is visible and the mixture is perfectly smooth. (I use a fork rather than my fingers in order to keep it as cool as possible.) If it will have to wait a while in a hot kitchen before use, refrigerate it.

To use beurre manié, whittle off bits equal to about ¼ to ½ teaspoonful each and add them to the simmering sauce over low heat. It is hard to give a rule about how much to use, because any liquid to which you add it—say, unthickened gravy from a roast, or a soup that you want to lightly bind—will have a particular viscosity. After a few times you will learn to judge by eye without laborious measuring. Begin by adding the equivalent of about 1 to 2 teaspoons beurre manié per cup of liquid. Stir it in well (or shake and swirl the pan if it’s full of meat or vegetables in large chunks). Watch for signs of thickening and add a bit more if after a minute or two the sauce or soup looks too thin, but remember that it will slightly thicken of its own accord after it reaches serving plates. Once the paste is well incorporated and the sauce thickened to your liking, remove the pan from the heat.

To keep the sauce from acquiring a floury or wheaty taste, either serve it instantly or briefly keep it warm without boiling (for instance, on a heat-deflecting device over very low heat). Or if it fits your schedule, let it simmer at least another 20 minutes. The floury quality develops when a beurre manié–thickened sauce cooks for more than a few minutes, but goes away with longer simmering.

Beurre manié will keep in the refrigerator, tightly covered, for a week or two, but I prefer to make up small amounts as needed.