October 4, 2010 – The Answer is Always Pork

Last night laying in bed, Jordan and I had a serious discussion. It went something like this …

“If you had to live the rest of your life without bacon or butter, which would it be?” “Ummmm, that’s a tough one. But as much as I love pork, especially bacon, I’m going to have to say butter.”

Then …

“If you had to live the rest of your life without coffee or butter, which would it be?” “Oh! Now that is just not fair. Ummmmm. Butter. A life without coffee is cruel, but butter just makes everything better. ” “So, butter?” “Yes, butter.”

Although the final decisions were hard to come to, the clear winner in these match-ups is butter, which brings us to today’s culinary experiment …

Heavy whipping cream -> Homemade butter! from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking
1 pint heavy whipping cream
Salt (optional)
Garlic, herbs, pepper (optional)

Start with a pint of heavy whipping cream. I poured it into my kitchen aid stand mixer and set the dial to high speed (6-8). You could also use a hand mixer, or put the cream in a jar and shake that sucker for 20 minutes. I took the easy way out and it took about 8 minutes to get from cream to butter.

Beat the cream for several minutes, occasionally scraping down the sides of the bowl with a spatula. The cream will go through several stages. The transformation is pretty incredible. When the cream has turned into butter and buttermilk, you’ll know.

Stage 1: cream

Stage 2: whipped cream

Stage 3: extra-thick whipped cream

Stage 4: broken whipped cream (crumbly looking little bits)

Stage 5: separation of cream into butter and buttermilk!

Note: You may want to drape a kitchen towel over the mixer as to prevent splattering cream all over your kitchen. I realized this about half way through the process, and had a little extra cleaning up to do afterward.

Once the cream has separated into butter and buttermilk, strain the buttermilk out with a fine mesh sieve into a bowl. Place the butter in a separate bowl and press out more of the buttermilk with a wooden spoon. Pour off the buttermilk. Put the buttermilk aside and brainstorm a recipe using buttermilk.

Note: It is very important to get all of the buttermilk out of the butter. If you don’t remove all of the buttermilk from the butter, it will go rancid very quickly. And that would be very, very sad.

After you’ve squeezed most of the buttermilk, pour a cup or two ice-cold water over the butter. Using the back of a wooden spoon, smash the butter around. Washing the butter with water helps to remove the last of the buttermilk. Pour off the water. Repeat this process until the water you pour off is clear. I did it three times.

Note: the water must be ice-cold as to not melt the butter solids.

Add salt to taste and mix throughly with a wooden spoon.

The final product! Salted butter (about 1/2 cup) and buttermilk (about 1 cup)! YUM!

As an accompaniment to tonight’s dinner (Jordan will bring us more on that later), I decide to make Beurre d’ Ail garlic herb butter from Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”. I’ve reduced her recipe to a one meal for two serving size.

4 T fresh, salted butter

1 clove garlic

1 T parsley (or other green herb), minced

Set the unpeeled clove of garlic in boiling water. Bring to a boil for 5 seconds. Remove from pot, rinse and peel. Bring to a boil again for 30 seconds more. Pound to a smooth paste in a mortar and pestle (or garlic press, if you don’t have a mortar and pestle).

Pound or cream the butter and garlic together. Season with additional salt, pepper, and herbs.

Conclusions: The salted butter is divine! I can’t be more thrilled to have it on hand. Plus, making it was a fun (and quick!) science experiment. I highly recommend it! When the cream shifted into butter and buttermilk, Jordan could hear me shouting from the kitchen, “It worked! It really worked!” I’m also pretty happy to have a back-up plan for the next time I over-whip whipped cream. Lastly, the garlic herb butter was terrific on bread at dinner. The garlic flavor was strong so if you don’t love garlic like we do, scale back a bit. Homemade butter is the best!

-Emily

This week’s baking therapy was inspired by a bunch of over-ripe bananas languishing in the kitchen at work. I poked around the internet searching for a recipe and found several at Orangette, Molly Wizenburg’s delightful food blog. I read over her recipes and, keeping her tips and tricks in mind, decided to take this bread into my own hands.

As I creamed butter with sugar and then added chocolate chips, Jordan asked, “Isn’t the point of banana bread that it’s healthier because you use bananas instead of lots of butter and sugar?” … I always thought the point of banana bread was to make use of those gross, black, slug-like bananas that inevitably end up on your kitchen counter instead of throwing them away. Here is my recipe for a decadent banana bread, I make no apologies.

For the bread
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
3 medium bananas, mashed
3 T milk
2 cup all-purpose flour
1 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1/2 t cinnamon
1 cup chocolate chips

For the topping:
1 T butter, room temperature
2 T sugar
2 T brown sugar
1 t cinnamon
1/4 cup rolled oats

Preheat the over to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9 by 5 inch loaf pan with butter, and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, cream butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla.

In a separate bowl, mash bananas. Mix them with the milk.

In another bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon.

Add the flour mixture and banana mixture to the butter mixture in two parts, alternating, until just combined. Stir in chocolate chips. Pour into greased loaf pan and smooth top.

Combine topping ingredients by cutting in the butter. Sprinkle the bread evenly with topping.

Bake for one hour, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Allow to cool for a few minutes and then turn loaf out onto a wire rack to cool completely. Enjoy!

Conclusions: This is a serious bread … the sucker weighs in at about two pounds! And I wasn’t kidding when I said it was decadent. The banana flavor is present, but not overpowering and the chocolate chips bring it into dessert level. Jordan agreed with me that the cinnamon crumble topping was the best part. Most definitely will make again. Yum!

-Emily