Butter. I’ll spread some on a slice of proper bread, sprinkle it with some sea salt and call it dinner. Or I’ll cook some fresh fish in a good puddle of the stuff and finish off with a squeeze of lemon.

I guess I shouldn’t be saying this out loud in the land of olive oil worshippers, but I really LOVE butter. My mantra: “you can never have enough of a thing that is bad for you.” At its best, butter is creamy but light, with a slightly tart, buttermilky flavor (never sour!). It is bright yellow in color, has a slight shimmer and just screams: FARM FRESH!

So, I guess I shouldn’t even be thinking this at all in the land where every single national foodstuff is revered as a form of GOD, but: Italian butter sucks. It’s bleak and unattractive-looking, just tastes like fat and nothing else. I’m still looking for that one particular type that proves me wrong.

Butter really is one of the things the Dutch can be proud of. Especially of ‘boerenboter’ (farmer’s butter), made of the cream (yeah…butter should be around 84% fat) of fresh, non-homogenized milk. This ‘non-homogenized’ means that winter butter tastes completely different from summer butter, when the cows have been grazing in the meadows.

Pure lactic acid-producing bacteria are added to the cream after which they are left alone for about 36 hours. The cream comes out slightly soured, after which the churning can begin. Churning is basically shaking and beating the cream until it becomes so confused it transforms. Little ‘lumps’ of fat separate from the liquid – the buttermilk. Then, these lumps are rinsed with cold water and worked into a creamy mass that encapsulates the remaining traces of the liquid. The milk proteins emulsify the fat. The way this process is done determines the taste of the butter to a great extent (temperature, duration of churning, etc).

This is one of my favorite lazy recipes. Try to get your hands on some French (Bretagne, Normandie) butter or Irish butter.

Entrecôte with sage and orange butter

Serves 2

• 2 medium-sized entrecotes (rib steak)
• 3 tablespoons fresh butter, room temperature
• 1 tablespoon sage, finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon orange zest, finely chopped
• 1 teaspoon garlic, finely chopped
• 1.5 tablespoons fresh orange juice
• sea salt

Take the meat out of the fridge and its wrapping at least one hour before preparation. Season lightly on both sides with salt and fresh pepper.

In a small bowl, mix butter, sage, orange zests, garlic and juice with a fork to a creamy mass. Season with a bit of fresh sea salt.

Sauté the steaks ( = rare!) in butter and let them rest for about ten minutes, wrapped in aluminum foil.

Serve on preheated plates with a royal dollop of sage butter.

Picture courtesy of Luis Herrera.