HOW TO CREAM BUTTER

The butter must always be creamed or beaten before the flavoring is added to it. You can blend the butter to a cream in an electric beater, pound it in a bowl with a pestle, or mash it, a bit at a time, with the back of a wooden spoon, then beat it vigorously until it is light and creamy. Then the flavorings and the butter are creamed togedier, and the mixture is put in a cool place to firm up. If it is refrigerated, it will become as hard as an ordinary piece of chilled butter.

HOT BUTTER SAUCES

This famous sauce originated in Nantes, on the Loire river, and is tradi­tionally served with pike, brochet au beurre blanc. Warm, thick, creamy, and butter-colored, beurre blanc is actually nothing but warm butter flavored with shallots, wine, vinegar, salt, and pepper. The trick in making it is to keep the butter from turning oily; that is, it must retain its creamy appearance. A chem­ical process takes place once the wine and vinegar base is boiled down and the acids are well concentrated, so that when the butter is gradually beaten in, the milk solids in die butter remain in suspension rather than sinking to the bottom of the pan as they usually do when butter is melted. For this reaction to take place, the initial amount of vinegar must be a strong one. Once the creaming process has started, you can go on beating in butter to double the amount of that given in the recipe. You can also beat in less, but if you do so the sauce may have too acid a taste.

Chef's Skillet and Saute Pan

Knives should be washed separately and by hand as soon as you have finished using them. Tarnished blades are cleaned easily with steel wool and scouring powder. A magnetic holder screwed to the wall is a practical way of keeping knives always within reach and isolated from other objects that could dull and dent the blades by knocking against them.

Knives and Sharpening Steel

A knife should be as sharp as a razor or it mashes and bruises food rather than chopping or cutting it. It can be considered sharp if just the weight of it, drawn across a tomato, slits the skin. No knife will hold a razor-edge for long. The essential point is that it take an edge, and easily. If the steel is too hard, the knife is very difficult to sharpen, and for diis reason stainless steel knives are often unsatisfactory.

You will be far better off with plain, rustable, carbon steel knives that can be sharpened quickly on a butcher's steel. The French chef's knife is the most useful general-purpose shape, as it can be used equally well for chopping or paring. If you cannot find good knives, consult your butcher or a professionally trained chef.