Butter ‘Fatta in Casa’
One of the easiest things you can make yourself at home, if not with a little arm work, is butter.
Home-made butter tastes really nice for eating fresh on bread, but doesn’t cook as well as
the shop-bought stuff, which has a higher fat content and hence contains less water. You can
flavour the butter with garlic and parsley or herbs like chives or sage at the sieving stage when
the butter is soft and pliable.
Ingredients:
500 ml single cream
salt
2 tablespoons water
The only equipment you need for this is a big jar with a wide neck and a lid that closes tight.
Pour some boiling water into it first to sterilize it. You simply pour the cream into the jar and add
a good pinch of salt and the water.
Then you shake really hard up and down so that the contents ‘hit’ against the base and the
lid. You shake and you shake and you shake the jar until your arms feel they are going to fall off!
What will happen is that the contents will become thick and you will think that you are never
ever going to end up with butter. But then, as if by miracle, the mixture separates and you are
left with a solid lump of butter (still with lots of moisture in it) and with buttermilk, which is great
for making pancakes.
Strain the buttermilk and keep it in the fridge for up to three days. Place the butter in a fine
sieve. Press it down with a wooden spatula and jiggle it about in the sieve for about 5 minutes
to get rid of as much of the excess liquid as you can. Then use the spatula to slap it into little
tablets or bars before popping them into the fridge.
*taken from the book ‘From Seed to plate’ by Paolo Arrigo, published by Simon and Schuster