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Green Butter
One sound peeled shallot, one-quarter bean peeled garlic, two branches well-cleaned parsley, one branch fresh watercress, three-quarters of an ounce fresh butter, one and a half saltspoons salt, one-half saltspoon cayenne pepper. Place all these in a mortar, except the butter, and pound to a pulp; add now the butter and pound again until the whole is well thickened. Pass through a strainer into a bowl, keep in a cool place and use as required.
A compound butter in the classic French manner, scaled for a single portion. The proportions are aggressive — the seasoning is calculated against a very small amount of butter — so read the quantities carefully before multiplying.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. So the recipe calls for about 3/8 teaspoon salt and 1/8 teaspoon cayenne against 3/4 ounce of butter, which is a scant 1 1/2 tablespoons. That is a highly concentrated, distinctly hot seasoning butter meant to be used in small dabs, not spread on bread.
- "One-quarter bean" of garlic"Bean" here is usually read as a clove, though it may instead mean a piece of garlic about the size of a bean. Either way a quarter of it is a sliver; use the smallest clove in the head and cut it down.
- Butter temperature is the hingeThe butter must be genuinely soft — cool room temperature, not melting — or it will never take up the pounded herbs and the mixture will break into greasy specks instead of thickening. Cold butter is the usual reason this fails.
- Mortar or machineA small food processor works, but pulse rather than run it, and expect to scrape the bowl repeatedly; a mortar gives a smoother pulp with this little volume. Pound the aromatics to a genuine paste before the butter goes in.
- Passing through a strainerThe original means a fine sieve or tamis, worked with the back of a spoon or a stiff plastic scraper, to catch parsley stems and shallot fibre. It is worth doing for texture, and it is easier if the butter is soft.
- Yield and useThis makes roughly 1 1/2 tablespoons — enough to finish one or two grilled steaks, chops or fillets of fish, or to whisk into a pan sauce off the heat. Multiply by four to six for a family batch.
- StorageRoll into a log in parchment and refrigerate; the raw shallot and garlic mean it is best within two or three days, after which the garlic turns harsh. It freezes well in a log and can be sliced into coins straight from frozen.
- WatercressOne "branch" is a single sprig, leaves and tender stem. If watercress is unavailable, arugula gives a similar peppery note; spinach will give the colour but not the bite.
Green butters belong to the family of beurres composés that formed the backbone of nineteenth-century restaurant finishing work — a small quantity of flavoured butter dropped on a grilled cut at the moment of service, doing the work of a sauce without a saucepan. This one is a plain cousin of beurre de Montpellier, the elaborate green butter of French cold buffets, which adds anchovy, capers, tarragon, chervil and hard-boiled yolk; here the formula is stripped to shallot, garlic, parsley and cress. The recipe is written in small weights and saltspoons rather than in cupfuls, and it assumes a mortar.