Cape Town - Time magazine is building me up, buttercup. Buttering me up. I feel like a slice of crusty bread on which a great squadge of butter is being spread from end to end. I feel like the cat that got the cream and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow rolled into one. Because Butter. Is. Back.
You no longer have to glance forlornly at the packs of unwanted butter in the supermarket fridge while you decide between the 50 percent or 40 percent fat yellow margarine or “spread”, a word I suspect disguises any number of potential maladies.
You can now sally forth, head held high, and proudly pluck a 500g block of butter and plonk it into your shopping basket with a flourish and the smug grin of a Mr Bean trying to impress all the other shoppers. Because – if you read this (oh, and Time magazine) – you know something they might not.
When the thin-lipped woman with the sour expression sadly shifts a pack of tofu off the shelf into her shopping basket, and her eye catches your rash choice of butter over “better”, do not rise to her grimace of distaste. For it is you, and not she, who is in the know. You know that you can go home and cook with the best ingredient that ever graced a kitchen, the one ingredient other than salt that gives food so much flavour, just by being there. You know that you can melt it, clarify it, burn it and cream it, you can froth it and beat it, and always it will do so much more for a dish than its pale cousin, the hateful yellow margarine, the Jon Snow of spreads, which for so long has been in favour.
Out of the wings comes the butter, out of the sin bin, out of the dunce corner, butter with a get-out-of-jail-free card while yellow margarine gets a do-not-pass-go card. Out of the attic, out of the dusty old suitcase in the corner, out of the cellar comes butter, shaking off the years of neglect, shucking off the shackles of hate like a dignified dissident who has always known he was right, who made a stand, who stood his ground, and who knew that one day, this day, would come.
Because butter is healthy again. Butter always was healthy. Butter always was better for us than the yellow margarine which a friend of mine describes as “one carbon away from plastic”. And if you don’t believe me, believe Time magazine. Because butter is the face of Time magazine. Butter is the new cover boy. Butter is the chosen one.
The June 23 cover of Time magazine is emblazoned with a beautiful twirl of the good stuff and the simple legend, “Eat Butter”.
Of course, moderation remains everything. Being given a green light, or let out of jail, doesn’t mean we should all eat a slab of butter a day or even a week. The old sensible rules about using these saturated fats modestly still apply… a smear of butter rather than lashings of it on bread, eggs fried in a little melted butter, not a panful. It also means full-cream milk is okay, but also in moderation, and guess what? Yip, pork fat is not the heart attack on a plate it’s been accused of being. Bacon, anybody?
I remember in the late 1960s when the first tubs of yellow margarine started to appear in the shops. Nothing like the mad proliferation there is now. It never tasted right. If you smeared a slice of bread with real butter, and then with peanut butter … remember that smack of splendid butteriness? Nothing compares. Certainly not margarine. And take your pick of hot baked potatoes drenched with butter or with margarine and I know which one I’d choose every time.
Prime rib with sage butter
I celebrated by roasting a joint of prime rib of beef – bought from the excellent butchery at the vast new Pick n Pay at the V&A Waterfront – in a sinfully rich, and Time magazine-approved, sage butter.
All you need is as much butter as you like, several sage leaves, massaged with your fingers, and salt to taste.
Melt the butter, add the sage, simmer gently for a few minutes for the sage flavour to infuse into the butter, then remove the leaves and discard. Brown the joint in this on all sides, salt all over, then roast in a 220ºC oven – with all that sage butter – for 20 minutes. Reduce the heat to 160ºC and roast for 15 minutes for every 450g. Baste now and then. This should bring a medium-rare result. Rest for 20 minutes in a warm place. (The meat, Daisy.)
Serve with nothing more complicated than the sage butter – you don’t need any other sauce.
So it’s time for amnesty. The war on butter is over. The prodigal butter is returned to home, hearth and table. And all is well with the world once more.
Weekend Argus