by 
Eating is really one of your indoor sports. You play three times a day, and it’s well worth while to make the game as pleasant as possible.– Dorothy Draper
Down Under: Cultured butter from South Australia’s Woodside Cheese Wrights
by Amanda McInerney
There’s butter, and then there’s butter
Whenever anyone asks me what were the high points of our recent trip to Europe I always answer with two simple words: the food. We happily indulged ourselves whenever possible, knowing we would be walking it all off within days, and I was pleased to note that I came home carrying no extra baggage except for my shopping.
I was having a conversation about our foodie finds with my friend Kris Lloyd, the cheese-making talent behind South Australia’s multi-award winning Woodside Cheese Wrights, not long after we got back and was waxing lyrical about some butter made from clotted cream (cultured butter) which we had bought on our last day in London. It was part of a significant haul that we took home from London’s Borough Markets for a final feeding frenzy before we flew home and had made quite an impression. Kris commented that she had recently been “playing around” (her words) with cultured butter, including one which she had washed in whiskey. With the taste of the delicious, golden London lipids still lingering, to say I was eager to try Kris’ efforts would be something of an understatement.
Cultured butter is something of a recent discovery for many Australians, but has been in use for hundreds of years in Europe. The butter we are used to is what Europeans refer to as “sweet cream butter” — delicious, but lacking the depth of flavour of cultured butter. Cultured butter is made in exactly the same way as ordinary butter, but a live culture is added to the cream which is allowed to ripen for some time before being churned, salted (or not) and rinsed. Kris adds the culture to her cream 24 hours before she uses it to make butter, giving the cream time to “clot”. Cultured butter has a richer, deeper flavour, which some find somewhat tangy, and also comes with a little probiotic boost from the addition of the live culture.
Kris gave me three different batches to play around with — an almost unsalted butter, salted butter and the remarkable whiskey-washed version — and I’ve had a very happy day or two getting to know them. They are all truly delicious and definitely add an extra facet to the dishes I used them in: a Mushroom and Almond Bruschetta with Chèvre and Vanilla-Poached Oranges with Pikelets. I kept these recipes fairly simple in order to let the ingredients do the talking. There’s no point in using outstanding produce and then smothering it with other flavours and fancy techniques; good food doesn’t need to be tricky. The mushrooms I used came from Marco the Mushroom Man in the Adelaide Central Market and the sublime oranges were in our CSA box from Jupiter Creek Farm, all fresh, local and fabulous. I couldn’t help adding some wonderful Beerenberg Caramelised Onions to the mushroom dish. They finished it off perfectly.
Recipe
Mushroom and Almond Bruschetta with Chèvre
Prep time: 5 mins
Cooking time: 10 mins
Total time: 15 mins
Serves: 2
This made a good lunch for 2, but would also make an entrée for 4.
Click here for metric-Imperial conversions.
Ingredients
500 gms Portobello mushrooms, sliced30 gms toasted almonds, ground as fine as your food processor will allow
100 gms Woodside Cheesewright chèvre
80 gms cultured butter
1 tbsp chopped thyme
1 good pinch of salt
Beerenberg Caramelised Onions or ones you make yourself
2 large slices sourdough bread
Instructions
- Melt the butter in moderately hot pan, add mushrooms and salt. Cook on low heat.
- When mushrooms begin to soften, add the ground nuts and the thyme. Continue cooking until mushrooms are cooked to taste.
- Slice bread and toast. (At this point you may/may not choose to butter it with more of the cultured butter. I’ll leave you to guess what I did.)
- Pile the cooked mushrooms on the toasts, sprinkle each with a teaspoon or two of the caramelised onions, then crumble the chèvre over the top. Serve.
The whiskey-washed butter was used in an even simpler dish of pikelets (small bite-sized pancakes) with vanilla-poached oranges, but the combination was absolutely stunning and much appreciated by the guests to whom I served it yesterday for afternoon tea. My good friend Meg is very partial to a wee dram or two of whiskey and her eyes glazed over just a little while eating these.
I’m sure everyone can work out how to make basic pikelets.
As for the vanilla-poached oranges: the oranges were simply peeled, making sure all of the pith was removed, sliced about 10mm thick and gently poached for ten minutes in a syrup made of 1 1/2 cups of white sugar, 1/2 cup of water and one vanilla bean, split open and scraped – hardly a recipe at all! I cooled them slightly in the syrup, buttered the hot pikelets with the whiskey-washed butter and layered the oranges and pikelets, topping with a dab of the precious butter. Eat, then swoon.
Related articles
|
|
Gluten-Free Cooking: Buttered Apricots and Goat Cheese
by Jenn Oliver
Incorporating fruit into your starters and main courses: an untraditional approach
Fruit deserves to have a place outside of dessert. Dessert is often shunned for fear of ingesting too many sugar-filled calories and a myriad other reasons, and sadly fruit is often under-appreciated, being associated only with a guilty, and even naughty, indulgence.
How often do we associate certain fruits solely with pies, tarts, scones, cakes and other sweet delights? Such a view not only limits our appreciation for fruit, but forces upon us a paradigm that fruit should be “improved upon” by making it even sweeter than it already is. Maybe for some acidic fruits, such as certain berries or citrus fruit, this is true, but many are already pleasurably sweet and unfortunately get overlooked as a valid component in other parts of a meal.
What if fruit were the star of other dishes too? Maybe a first course, served with meat, etc.? Some of my favorite dishes involve fruits, and it’s not just for the sweetness – many fruits pair really well with savory items and I think provide a balance to other strong elements. One of my most frequented pairings this summer has been to add herbs and the tang of locally-made goat cheeses to baked or roasted seasonal fruits. The markets are absolutely brimming with succulent produce, and every two weeks it becomes a “new” mad rush to enjoy as many ways as possible: first strawberries, then cherries, then apricots & peaches, and soon plums and other berries will arrive en masse.
And you know what? Sometimes I think the taste of fresh fruit is even more enjoyable when it is not a part of le dessert.
Click here for the recipe.
|
|
Mediterranean Food Connection: Bagels, Smoked Salmon, Goat Cheese and Leek Shoots
by bagel
Click here for French version.
Ingredients
Click for metric-Imperial recipe converter.
4 bagels (click here for Christophe’s bagel recipe)
4 slices smoked salmon
200 g / 7 oz. creamy fresh (not fermented) goat cheese
50 g / 2 large tablespoons leek shoots, or failing this, scallions, chives or chopped shallots
Freshly ground white pepper
Instructions
- Cut bagels in half crosswise. Toast.
- Mix goat cheese and white pepper to taste.
- Spread inside bottom surface of bagels with goat cheese.
- Put one slice of salmon on each bagel.
- Evenly distribute leek shoots on bottom half of bagels.
- Put top half of bagels back in place.
- Serve immediately.
|
|
