For the Love of Butter

When you cook and write about food for a living there is a general assumption that your mother, or your grandmother sparked your interest in food. People imagine a childhood spent in the kitchen soaking in the smells and tastes of food and learning the art of cooking. I too like this image of the younger me watching wonderful food lovingly prepared by my mother and grandmothers. I can almost see myself perched on a stool at the edge of the stove so that I can reach the cooking pot and stir it under a maternal gaze.

Alas my childhood wasn’t at all like that. I don’t remember either of my grandmothers cooking anything. My mother’s mother who lived with us was confined to a wheelchair because of severe rheumatoid arthritis, so she wasn’t able to cook. My paternal grandmother just didn’t cook. I remember visiting her, even staying the night but I don’t remember eating anything she cooked. There were no amazing meals enjoyed around her dining table, nothing more than a cup of tea came out of her kitchen.

My mother, on the other hand was cooking all the time, we rarely went to restaurants. There was an occasional take out from the local fish and chip shop or the Chinese restaurant but almost everything we ate was homemade. My mother preserved fruits and vegetables and made her own jam. I should have been a brilliant cook by the time I was ten, my lack of interest wasn’t her fault, and she tried very hard to encourage me but to no avail. Once she convinced me to help her make cup cakes. She asked me to take them out of the oven and when I opened the door a blast of hot air hit my face and I screamed and that was it for me in the kitchen. As a child I was a real wuss.

My mother cooked many dishes I dreaded. There was tripe in a thick, white sauce filled with onions and Sunday night dinners of crumbed sheep’s brains with bacon. Now I look back and think I would love to eat them today but as a child they were just vile. There were many things she cooked that I loved and made me proud. For school fêtes she created the best toffee apples of any mother, choosing apples that were tart and crunchy and coating them with just the right amount of caramel. She also poured the same liquid sugar into paper cases and sprinkled them with tiny coloured balls we called hundreds and thousands also known as nonpareils. I was the envy of the whole school but it didn’t lure me into the kitchen.

I did make an exception when she made burnt butter biscuits. Now just let me explain to anyone brought up in North Americans that this biscuit is what you would call a cookie. What you call a biscuit is, for us in Australia, a scone. This was a family recipe, both my aunts made them, but my mother’s rendition was the best.

The name fascinated me – burnt butter, I couldn’t believe anyone would burn butter intentionally. Butter always took pride of place in our home slathered on toast, creamed to create buttery cakes and the only choice for sandwiches. We poached fish in butter, whipped it into potatoes and my mother kept the butter wrappers carefully folded into squares in the refrigerator, they were perfect for greasing baking sheets and cake pans. She would never burn it.

Of course the biscuits weren’t made with burnt butter at all.  Latter, at chef’s school, I learnt it was what the French call beurre noisette. Beurre noisette translates as hazelnut butter and it is butter cooked just until the milk solids begin to brown, and emit a wonderfully nutty smell, reminiscent of hazelnuts.

The biscuits are simplicity itself, the butter is browned, cooled and mixed with flour, sugar and baking powder and an egg, all of the flavor comes from the browned butter. And while I wasn’t keen on doing anything connected with cooking as a child, especially if involved a hot oven I vividly remember helping my mother with these. She would roll the dough into balls and place them on the baking sheet. My job was to flatten them with a fork. I loved the perfection of the marks the tines made in the dough. Once I had flattened them all I would then push a blanched almond into the centre of each one. I left it to her to put them in and out of the oven.

Today the smell of butter browning reminds me of my mother and her attempts to get me cooking. Although, I was a late starter, now I can’t stop cooking and hot ovens no longer scare me.

Against all odds my mother passed on the importance of cooking and appreciation of one of the most magical ingredients – butter. Thanks mum.

Burnt Butter Biscuits Recipe