Nothing too interesting here, just a delicious salad. Jonathan apples, walnut and almond puree, blue cheese dressing, brown butter solids for crunch and depth of flavor, and some assorted microgreens. Yet people loved it. This was the favorite course of some of the guests. Indeed, it was delicious, if a bit less out there than most of what I do.

Brown butter solids are a byproduct of clarifying butter. When you slowly heat butter in order to separate the butterfat from the milk solids, eventually the temperature gets hot enough to start frying those milk solids. If you let it keep going, they start to get toasty and brown. Eventually, when they're nice and brown, the butterfat will have taken on a lot of that nutty, toasty flavor--now it's fantastic ghee. Generally, those milk solids are then strained out and discarded. But they're delicious! So I use them. However, the yield of brown butter solids is quite low from this process. In order to increase the yield dramatically, I whisk powdered milk solids into the butter once it's melted. I've found that it works best if you use about 1/4 pound milk solids per pound of butter. Your yield of brown butter solids will be pretty high--around 1/2 pound, since the solids will absorb some of the butterfat.

Posted by Barzelay on 2010/01/10 @ 15:49 | Comments (0) | Lazy Bear, Veggies, Fruit, Grain, Cheese