Serves: 5

Making butter is quite simple. Using the large chopper blade in your food processor, pour in a quart of cream and just let it go. It will become whipped and then just keep getting thicker and thicker until it finally separates. Put it all into a mixing bowl, squeeze the liquid (skim milk) from the fat with your (clean) hands, and there you are—a lump of butter. I have found that the best results occur if you let the cream sit in the refrigerator for a week before you churn it and then let it warm almost to room temperature.

The skim milk that’s left is sweeter, more wholesome, and far more delicious than any I could buy in a supermarket. It could only be fresher if the cow were making it herself. That skim milk goes into soups, sauces, and custards, and no one knows that what they are eating is good for them.

What To Do With Your Lump Of Butter:
Break it into 1-inch pieces and throw it back into the processor. This is the point where you make the butter into any fantasy that pleases you. I generally add about two tablespoons of fresh herbs and a little nutmeg, black pepper, and salt. Spin it just long enough to smooth the herbs and soften the butter into a "whip." You now have what is probably the most wonderful herb butter you've ever eaten.

After you learn the herbs, the rest comes easily. Ripe pears whipped into fresh butter, or blackberries, or maple syrup, or lobster meat. The possibilities are endless. Imagine whipping a handful of wild strawberries into your butter and squeezing it through a pastry bag onto French toast points that have been sautéed in Grand Marnier and dusted with vanilla sugar. That, and a cup of coffee, would be a wonderful way to celebrate the first morning of a romance—or the last.

Excerpt from James Haller’s entire chapter on butter.


Fun Fact: Every year on July 4th, the Declaration of Independence is read from the same balcony it was first read from, the Old State House. Built in 1713, it is the oldest public building in Boston. The oldest wooden building in Boston is Paul Revere’s House. It was nearly 100 years old when the patriot took his famous midnight ride to warn "every Middlesex village and farm" that the British were coming.

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