On Food #4: Butter.
I can’t be the first one to write a love letter to butter. Ok, maybe not a love letter but a 300-odd word essay must amount to the same, surely.
Much like the Italians, Argentinian breakfasts consist of something sweet, usually a slice of white bread, lightly toasted and slathered in a not-so-thick but not-so-thin layer of butter. You could absolutely stop there or you could top it with jam, usually strawberry, or go a cut above with dulce de leche. I definitely remember having it all three ways.
It’s not easy to describe what good butter tastes like. It tastes like home, like the most familiar thing you know, reliable, and it delivers exactly what it’s required which is why bad butter sucks. It reeks of betrayal and it puts me in a bad mood, much like a bad meal out.
I do enjoy sampling the different kinds of butter available. Something I never thought about as a child, butter was butter, but as an adult, I indulge in plenty of different types which not only bring excitement but discovery into my life. Raw, cultured, french, flavoured, unsalted, salted, I love them all equally, you know?
What is life if your lips are not covered in melted butter once in a while?
One of my earliest butter-related memories is sitting at my grandma’s table to enjoy lunch, one she had prepared for both my brother and me. Gnocchi, handmade by her of course, with butter but it was more like butter with homemade gnocchi with lots of parmesan dusted over it, reminiscent of a snowy mountain in the middle of a snowstorm. Cue my mother telling grandma off for adding too much butter, in turn, my grandma would respond with some sort of dismissive answer, she had obviously internalised the saying “it’s easier to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission”. What is life if your lips are not covered in melted butter once in a while? Those gnocchi (sometimes ravioli, too) are a very important image of my childhood, glistening with a foamy yellowy sheen that only melted butter imparts on anything that touches, just like gold dust.
