Butter

I love butter. Always have. When I was a child, it was all sunflower margarine at home, for reasons of health (huh) and economy, but whatever chance I got I would devour butter. My grandmother would not allow margarine in the house, and used to slip me morsels of butter in the kitchen, and slather it thick on my bread. During my semi-vegan years, of course, butter was scarce, relegated to the occasional binge-treat. These days I use it with a liberal hand. Cooking, and melted onto just about anything. Sometimes I even eat it with a spoon.

Of course, there's butter and butter. Generally we're pretty spoilt for butter in the UK - grass fed is easy to come by, even the cheap varieties. I like it salted, and I like the whey cream sort, and the cultured cream kind that's common on mainland Europe.

Out of curiosity, I decided to have a go at making some. All it takes is cream and a food processor, creme fraiche for cultured butter. Just bung the cream in and fire it up. A whisk attachment would be ideal, but my bargain basement food processor doesn't have one, so I used the blade.

I was surprised at how quickly it turned. Within half a minute it looked like whipped cream, then a few seconds after that it turned grainy, and a few seconds after that it was yellow solids collecting and liquid. Everything I'd read advised draining the liquid out periodically, so I dutifully did so; it gets very splashy very quickly, even with the lid on. This was, of course, the buttermilk, something I'd never tried, and which was surprisingly delicious - I'd expected something thin and whey-like, but it was rich and creamy, with a tangy, but not sour, flavour.

As soon as the solids start appearing, the butter is more or less done. You don't want to keep beating it until it's creamed, as if for a sponge cake, or starts melting. The next step is to wash it - turn it into a bowl, pour in a little iced water, and mash it with a fork. I would guess you could do this in the processor, using pulse. Drain and repeat. You could throw away the rinsing water, or you could do as I did, enthused by the buttermilk, and drink it. Repeat three or four times. Then carry on mashing the butter to get any remaining water out, add some salt if required, and either pat or roll into shape on greaseproof paper, or press into a pot or bowl.

Good lord, it was delicious. I shall certainly be eating this one with a spoon.

Steak and egg

This was a little thin steak

like you get in packs at supermarkets, not much more than a quarter of an inch thick. The problem is that they're so thin they're pretty difficult to cook to anything less than overdone, if you want any sort of browning on the surface. You need a very hot pan, or maybe they'd work on a charcoal grill.

But the big advantage is that you can keep them individually wrapped in the freezer and they'll defrost in half an hour. So you can have steak and eggs for breakfast, or lunch, on a whim. I did them a minute on either side, left them to rest while I did the eggs, and had them with salad and sauerkraut. Nice spring lunch.

Lamb with mango salsa

After yesterday's success with the salmon, I was inspired to apply the same principle to a lamb steak: a kind of variation on lamb chop with mint sauce. The salsa was basically the same but with mint and cumin added. It went very well with the lamb, though the salsa could probably have benefitted from more cumin and some lime juice.

A summery dish.

Salmon with mango salsa

Necessity was the mother of invention: there were only random things in the house and it was lunchtime. So, I ransacked the fridge and the freezer. The salsa was onion, chilli, lemon juice, salt and chopped mango, with desiccated coconut to take up the liquid. The salmon went on a pile of green beans and shredded beetroot sautéed with horseradish. It was actually pretty good. With some coriander in the salsa it would have been very good indeed.

Cauliflower risotto

Another thing that sounds alarmingly like a 'handy hints to save money in the kitchen' recipe - not that there's anything wrong with that, of course. It sounds a bit grim, but actually the idea was to replace most of the rice with cauliflower, to keep the carbs low-ish.

I love risotto, but I think the real star of the show is the butter, the cream, and the cheese. And cauliflower, apart from being a surprisingly good rice substitute, goes uncannily well with mushrooms. It brings out the earthiness - think cauliflower soup with truffle oil, if in any doubt. So I surmised that, even apart from the carb aspect, cauliflower might be a good ingredient in a mushroom risotto. Plus, we all know how well cauliflower goes with cheese.

It was pretty simple. Onion, celery, garlic, mushrooms, softened in butter; then a dash of chicken stock and white wine, a little rice, and precooked cauliflower. Proceed as normal, mushing up the cauliflower as you go and bearing in mind that less liquid will be needed because there's much less rice to soak it up. Deluge with cream and parmesan at the end.

It looked extremely authentic. You might guess from the taste, or the texture, that it wasn't a regular risotto, but not in a bad way - it tasted great.

Carb-wise, it worked out at about 25g total for a moderate, restaurant-size portion. That's not bad - way better than a regular risotto - but given that I could quite easily, in certain moods, have wolfed down twice as much, it is a little high. Without the rice, it would have been about 16g for that same moderate portion. I'll try it that way next time - but I suspect that while it will still taste great, it might not hold together so well. We shall see.

Sardine tapenade

It sounds a bit make do and mend, but it's delicious. Onion, garlic, mushroom, lemon, tomato paste, oregano, all sautéed in olive oil; chopped olives and capers, and canned sardines mashed in.

With a very very thin and crisp slice of sourdough rice toast.

Spicy fishcakes

This is one of those dishes that I used to make a lot, and then inexplicably just forgot about. I hadn't made it in months, at least, but then had the sudden fancy for it last night.

I use canned fish, usually mackerel, salmon or sardines. This time it was sardines. Mashed potato as a base to hold everything together. I've experimented with other things instead of the potato. Squash was ok, but not really right texturally and the flavour was too obtrusive. Yellow sweet potato likewise, though the flavour was good. This time I used white sweet potato, which was excellent - it had the texture of regular potato, and the flavour complemented the other flavours perfectly. I like white sweet potato a lot, but they're not so easy to find as yellow sweet potatoes. When I see them, I stock up.

Spices vary but it's usually coriander, cumin, ginger, chilli and turmeric. Some creamed coconut. Add to the mashed potato, with chopped onion, lemon juice and the fish. Fry in rissole shapes. I used the olive oil from the sardine cans.

It was really, really good.