Ode To Butter

It makes savory dishes pleasing to the palette, and adds an inimitable richness to desserts. Whether cold, hot, or somewhere in between, butter has transformative power.  Perhaps it's because butter itself is the result of something more like transmutation --- white liquid milk into golden, creamy heaven.

We love butter so much at Restaurant Eugene that we've started churning our own, and serving butter courses every night to accompany our various breads.  But that's not all.  The contemplation of perfecting house-made butter actually led Chef Hopkins to write this ode.  In the style of Keats, it's Chef's attempt to capture in words everything Vollon did with paint, and what we all feel with that first bite of the sweet, creamy, salty wonder that is butter.

Ode to Butter

Thou still unravished bride of promises

a child of art and craft

fixed with many suitors eyes

born of Thracia from capra and aries

reaching perfection with the cow

bursting from chicken kiev

laced with chive

my first experience

a joy I still recall

Vollon,  still life's master

Conjured you in 1875

Escoffier's contemporary,  he knew who you were:

a foundation.

In ancient India you were clarified into one of their most elemental of foods.

GHEE,  sanskrit for "bright"

you are an ancient offering to the gods and burned in holy lamps and funeral pyres

eternal

beaten out of cream

kneaded and shaped

salted to preserve

fresh, room temp-there is no need to refrigerate you

as the poet Seamus said

you are "coagulated sunlight"

sunlight transformed by the cow

from the seasonal hue

cool and spreadable I taste your season,

bright, fat and herbal in spring and summer when

fed on clover and fresh grass

in the winter you taste of hay and grain

ulia became Julia when met with your aroma
J

commingling in a pan with shallots

many people don't know that you actually lighten a dish

small knobs stirred into reduced stock

mouthfeel, richness

the dish which is missing something

is quickly set right

Would French cuisine exist without you?

Chef Point in '37, manned the stoves at La Pyramide writing

"Butter! Give me Butter! Always Butter!

So versatile are you

clarified to remove the milk

you saute at high heat

whole at low flame you perform a feat of magic:

you emulsify with yourself

the water, milk solids and fat,

a whisk, some coaxing

a smooth warm sauce is born, beurre monte

a little wine vinegar and shallot ... beurre blanc

toasted till hazelnut brown; noisette

darkened to almost burnt dark black; noir

worked into eggs: hollandaise and bernaise

asparagus, broccoli, and legumes

they all cry out for you

Pastry without you is unimaginable

your melting between the million layers is the puff

pate brisee, pate sucree,

cookies and cakes all begin with creaming

you and sugar

the South?

fresh churned from cream with a  second gift; buttermilk

whose quality is determined by how many of your children float across the surface

spread on warm biscuits with sorghum

a small knob in a bowl of grits

steaming hot sweet potatoes with you on top

bread & butter pickles tell us how they should be eaten

sweet, sour and unctuous

butterbeans are named in your honor

creamy like you when cooked right

glazed with you and black pepper

memories.

Who has not thought of you when you are not around?

hungry and romantic

blamed for a multitude of sins

doctors who decry you are often found at your back door

new science has shown;

you ain't all that bad.

in fact, your very nature may be good for the fabric of our brain

I knew that already

Think not of others. 

Margarine, unworthy imitation, it has no song

Lard, Schmaltz Oil.

they are not so universal

nor so simple and complex

an infinite story

I place you in an ancestral cast iron pan--

my grandfather's

watch you glaze across the black surface

when the bubbles foam and begin to subside

it is an invitation

add the minced onions and sweat

the beginning of so many journeys

from gumbo to perloo

I always begin with you

Come try Chef's house-churned butter at Restaurant Eugene soon.