I? Am a slob. I use the butter straight from the waxed paper wrapper. And because I feel slightly ashamed of this gross breach of butter etiquette, I will atone for my buttery sins (yet ANOTHER good name for a band) by sharing with you my three very favorite butter recipes. Or maybe I should say, butter-DRENCHED recipes. Affter you eat these things, if you were to wring out your tongue? It would drip butter. Nice image, huh? Here they are:
French Buttercream Icing
[I once made a batch of this icing to frost a cake that many children would be eating, and then my husband pointed out the foolishness of feeding small ones what is essentially raw eggs. But I couldn't waste it, oh no. So I scooped it onto graham crackers (only because I had no HobNobs handy)and discovered tastebud Nirvana. The sweet-ish-but-not-too, smooth, creamy, FAT icing, offset by the nutty graininess of the graham crackers - oh my sweet jesus, it was amazing.]
3/4 cup plus 2 TBSP butter
1 cup powdered sugar
4 egg yolks
2 egg whites
In a medium bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg yolks, one at a time. Whisk egg whites until stiff but not dry. Gently fold beaten egg whites into butter mixture. Makes about 2-1/2 cups.
Tiropeta
[My next-door neighbor just gave me half a pan of this and so I begged her for the recipe. Because I needed to be able to induce that cheesy, buttery stupor myself, whenever I so desired.]
2 lbs feta, crumbled
1 lb ricotta
3/4 cup grated Parmesan
4 eggs
2-3 TBSP dried dill
black pepper to taste
2 sticks butter, melted
phyllo dough
Mix together first six ingredients. Brush melted butter on a 9x13 pan. Layer 8 to 10 pieces of dough, coating each with melted butter. Put on cheese mix and flatten. Layer another (at least) twelve pieces of dough, coating each with melted butter. Cut. Bake at 375 degrees until golden brown, about 45 minutes.
Dutch Butter cookies [removed for mysterious reason : )]
[My friend C gave me this recipe a while ago. They are the best butter cookies I have ever tasted - even better than the pure butter shortbread recipe from Fine Cooking that I once made my little brother for Christmas, as his present - and that's saying alot. I love hanging out with C, and I don't get to do it nearly often enough as she lives three hundred miles away. But she is one of the few people who is completely simpatico with me over food. Once, she and I went out to eat, and we ate a nice little appetizer-y/tapas-y meal at a nice little restaurant. After which we went to another restaurant ostensibly for dessert, but instead wound up ordering and eating another ENTIRE meal. Followed by dessert. And she didn't think this was odd in the least. You see what I mean?]
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Thursday Show-and-Tell, courtesy of Blackbird
18 comments:
so.
now you have YOUR food assignments for the May Meet-up.
I've been in your kitchen and baked with you. You are not a slob. I love the quote...I did have to look it up and yes, it is an actual verse! Wow.
vw: qwwha (a very evil sounding laugh)
Sarah Louise - Twelve years of Baptist education. I know my Bible inside out, whether or not I choose to display said knowledge regularly. I could take you on in a Sword Drill anyday. And win.
bb - not chocolate? : )
I just keep my butter in the wax paper too. I have a plain glass butter dish that I use if I'm going to bring it to the table, but that's fairly rare.
You know my favorite way to have butter? I lover slathering softened butter on really good, really thick slices of brown bread. I pretty much lived on that and tea when I lived in London. In fact, I think shivering in my cold apartment (wearing my hat and scarf indoors), eating butter bread and reading Jane Eyre and David Copperfield, is one of my very happiest memories.
Wow BB you have the same butter dish as me. I wouldn't sweat it BUT I'm glad you did because look at those recipes!
PS. Gina, I love your description of your London days -- it's like a little short story packed into a paragraph.
Can't resist today's WV: dmmslj: " 'Dmm,' Sarah Louise joked, her mouth full of butter bread."
Sigh. How I loved it there. Maybe it was being newly married, or newly 25. Or because it's where I lived when I got pregnant. I just really, really loved it there.
Gina,
Weren't you going to go to London a while back? (or did you go and I misssed it?) I have friends who are moving to Nottingham in April...
and BB, I'm sure you could. My arsenal of memorized verses is pathetic. I have a lot of index cards, though!! And I used to be able to quote John 3:16 in Spanish...(although, what is a Sword Drill?)
SL--Ended up not being able to part with the cash involved for what would end up being a too-short stay. Sigh. We're going to NYC instead, leaving 3/26.
You can use the parchment paper wrappers to line terrine molds. Yes, I am both cheapskate enough to skimp on parchment paper and deranged enough to make terrines.
-J.
P.S. The Jesuits made us memorize the Bible too...they were very big on Counter-Reformation in those days.
I went to Catholic school in the late 70s and early 80s, and so didn't learn ANY scripture. (I think that's a total rip, as I would *love* to be able to throw bible verses at self-rightous people . . . but I suppose that's not a nice thing to want to do, is it? Nor is it a very nice reason for wishing I was better-versed in bible studies.) We sang songs and made pictures and learned prayers, but I swear to you I hardly know anything about the bible.
I blame Vatican II.
And PS--All this talk of butter makes me want to yell, "PARKAY!" I'm sorry, but I watched too much TV as a kid and now cannot be trusted to behave.
I love cookies made with butter. They're the best.
I don't have a butter dish either. Butter straight from the paper for baking, and from a tub for spreading.
Your tiropeta is the same as my cheese pita recipe (apart from the dill).
May Meetp-up? Are you all going to meet? I'm so jealous :-(
Gina,
You're righter than you know. My Jesuits were teh sort that in the late 1970s were still in denial over V2 and, as such, we had to get all hardcore with the Latin and Scriptural Studies and all sorts of things along those lines.
ON TOP OF making teenage boys get a Classical Education in the age of Disco when we din't want to, not that they cared.
The stuff I had to read between 9th & 12th grade reads like the Easton Press catalog.
-J.
-J.
In times of duress the butter dish is inadequate due to the speed of the butter consumption. What I'm saying is - nothing wrong with using straight from the wax paper at all. In fact, if more of us did it, then all the smashing of butter dishes wouldn't happen and we wouldn't be on this quest at all.
God knows where this is going.
okay, okay, i'm skulking back to my blog to post, since I seem to have too many opinions on everything this morning...but I just wanted to say: GINA, NYC, WOW! In my mind that's better than London and you'll be there while I'll be in Baaston...
I could add into the whole Vatican II conversation but I'm giving myself a gag order until I return to my own blog.
SL
Gina, NYC is full of friends you haven't met yet, such as, um, me. It's not where I live but it's where I work. If you think you'll have the time and the inclination (and with the boy it's understandable if either of you don't), email me - pegele03 at yahoo dot com.
Gina,
If you walk by Alan Flusser's, stop and genuflect on my behalf.
-J.
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