The Times Weekend - UK (2021-11-13)

12 Food + Drink

Brown butter and

miso chocolate chip

cookies

By Milli Taylor, cookery writer

Makes 7 or 8 large cookies

Ingredients

125g brown butter, cooled to room

temperature

120g light brown sugar

1 medium egg

1 tsp vanilla paste

50g white miso

200g plain flour

½ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda

150g mix of dark and milk chocolate

chunks

Method

1 With an electric whisk beat the

butter and sugar until fluffy, add the

egg and vanilla, then add miso. Whisk

to come together.

2 Sift in flour and powders, then fold

together with a big spoon.

3 Add the chocolate and form into

balls of 90g, cover and refrigerate for

at least an hour (or overnight).

4 Place balls on a lined baking tray

and bake in a well-heated oven (160C

fan) for 14 min. Leave to cool on the

tray. You want them a little

underbaked, to be still soft in the

middle at this stage, set with a good

crust on the outside but with good

chew in the centre.

C

hefs and cookery writers

have long known about the

wondrous magic of brown

butter: Nigella Lawson de-

scribes it as “one of life’s

great joys”, pouring it over

mashed potatoes in her col-

cannon recipe; Yotam Ottolenghi sings its

praises too, adding it to Brussels sprouts

with black garlic and tahini. But brown

butter has suddenly become the flavour of

the moment, used increasingly in online

recipes and supermarket products.

Waitrose has launched brown butter

mince pies, Tesco has released a festive

brown butter, cranberry and macadamia

recipe on its website, while Morrisons re-

cently posted a recipe for brown butter and

cinnamon cakes with port-poached fruit.

Brown butter can be used in baking,

cooking, or even just spread on toast, if you

allow it to cool once you’ve made it. It has

an intense hazelnutty taste that’s almost

toffee-like, and it is actually simple enough

to make; all you need to do is melt a block

of unsalted butter in a pan until it turns a

dark golden colour. However, it’s just as

easy to get it wrong and end up with black,

bitter, burnt butter, so how do Britain’s top

chefs get it just right?

“What makes brown butter brown is

when the fat solids in a block caramelise,

so the key thing to do is to cook it on a me-

dium heat,” says the chef Tommy Banks,

who has a brown butter ice cream on the

menu of his Michelin-starred restaurant,

the Black Swan at Oldstead in North York-

shire. “Too slow and the butter splits and it

clarifies, too fast the fat solids will burn.”

This process should take about five min-

utes from start to finish.

Banks recommends using a light-col-

oured or stainless-steel pan, so you can

really watch the solids changing colour.

“There’s a real five-second gap between

deliciously nutty brown butter and bitter

burnt butter,” he says.

Once the butter is in the pan, just leave

it on the heat, stirring or swirling it con-

stantly until it starts to colour. It will splut-

ter at first, and then begin to brown. You’re

looking for a deep golden colour. “You’ll

get a lovely smell of toasty hazelnuts or

praline, and something that tastes almost

like a Werther’s Original,” Banks says.

Take it off the heat as soon as it’s done to

stop it browning further, or pour it straight

into a Perspex jug.

“It’s incredibly versatile,” Banks says.

“We use it in ice cream, which gives this

rich taste and buttery texture that coats

your mouth, but we also give white fish,

like brill, a lick of it with a pastry brush.”

Some recipes call for set brown butter,

while other dishes add it in its golden liquid

form. If you choose to set yours, let it cool

for at least five minutes — it will be incred-

ibly hot — before transferring it into a

Tupperware container.

“As your butter cools, it’s a great oppor-

tunity to add herbs to flavour it,” says

Tomos Parry, the head chef at Brat restau-

rant in east London, where he serves

brown butter infused with hay. “You must

make sure the butter has cooled first, oth-

erwise the herbs will spit and burn.”

Parry then recommends using a whisk

to stir your butter every few minutes. “If

you let it cool naturally, all the caramelised

fat solids would sit at the bottom and you’ll

get a block that’s only half brown,” he says.

Baking with brown butter, either in

sponge cakes or pastry, is one of the

most delicious ways to enjoy it, says the

cookery writer Milli Taylor, whose brown

butter banana bread went viral during

lockdown. “It gives everything a deeper,

more intense flavour. I’ve used it in choco-

late chip cookies, shortcrust pastry and

added it to the frangipane in my brown

butter mince pies.”

You can swap brown butter for nor-

mal butter in almost any baking

recipe — you just need to be

mindful when you’re following

a recipe that calls for set butter

rather than melted because

you might need a bit more

if it’s brown butter. “If you

decide to substitute normal

for brown, you will need to

melt and set more butter

than the recipe calls for,”

Taylor says.

“This is because

when you melt but-

ter you are not only

toasting the fat

solids, you are

also evapo-

rating all

the water

and mois-

ture, so you’re

going to yield

less. If you melt

150g of butter, you

will be left with about

100g of brown butter.”

Once she has made a

batch of brown butter, Taylor

sets it in ice-cube trays and

keeps them in the fridge.

“That way you can pop a

piece out and add that gor-

geous nutty flavour to pretty

much anything you want,”

she says.

Top restaurants make cake with it, Nigella pours it on her mash,

— and it’s easy to prepare at home, says Hannah Evans

Why foodies are

all cooking with

brown butter

Pumpkin gnocchi

with gorgonzola and

brown butter

By Elia Sebregondi, Officina 00

Serves 4

Ingredients

500g pumpkin, sliced (skin on)

400g red-skinned potatoes, chopped

(skin on)

50g coarse sea salt

140g 00 pasta flour or plain flour

5g table salt

20g Parmigiano Reggiano, grated

1 egg yolk

A knob of butter

5 or 6 sage leaves

A handful of gorgonzola, crumbled,

to serve (optional)

Method

1 Preheat the oven to 200C (fan).

Lay the pumpkins and potatoes on

a baking tray, covered in a layer

of coarse sea salt and bake for

about 40-50 min, until they are

cooked through.

2 Place the pumpkins and

potatoes in a large mixing

bowl, discarding the skin,

and smash into a puree

with the flour, table salt,

parmesan and egg yolk.

3 Scoop into a medium-

sized piping bag and pipe

long sausage shapes,

then cut these into

gnocchi shapes.

4 Cook gnocchi in

boiling salted

water for 2 min

until softened, or

pan-fry them with

oil on a medium

heat until crispy.

5 Meanwhile,

melt the butter

and sage in a

frying pan on a

medium heat,

stirring, until

the butter is

brown and the

sage leaves

are crisp. Toss

the gnocchi in

the butter,

stir in the

gorgonzola

and serve.

Drizzle it over

gnocchi and pasta

Nigella Lawson

1 Melt 100g of unsalted

butter on a medium heat

in a light-coloured or

stainless-steel pan so you

can see the butter

change colour.

2 Watch the temperature.

If it is too high the butter

will burn, too low and it

will split.

3 As the butter melts, stir

with a whisk or a wooden

spoon. This will stop the

fat deposits in the pan

from catching on the

bottom and burning.

4 At first the butter will

spit, but this will stop and

it will begin to brown.

Keep watching the pan

and stirring.

5 You’re looking for a

golden colour and a

toasty, nutty smell. This

will take about 5 min.

6 Take it off the heat and

pour it into a Perspex jug

(the brown butter will be

very hot, so a plastic jug

may melt).

How to

make

brown

butter

Pumpkin gnocchi with

gorgonzola and brown butter