Cream And Butter

Every kitchen that cares about beautiful food needs rich cream and butter. Sadly, the silly skinny dieters who think bones are pretty, lose that you can't beat the richness of fat for flavour. Fat is sexy. It is exotic. One of the constants that I wish every kitchenwho cares, would have on hand, is both cream and butter and I don't mean the lite kinds. A quart of high percent cream will last a lot longer than milk and you can water it down to be milk if  you wish and use it that way, too. Long ago on the farm of old, my grandparents who had a wonderful Holstein cow that gave a ton of milk over the years, saw her hand milked product put into the separator in the milk house, and when Grandma cranked  the handle or we little ones did, out of  the spout came butter milk for butter churning on one side and thick cream on the other. From then on, at the long oil clothed table, we had rich sauces of every flavour generated from Gramma's spice rack and cream.  Not to mention, rich creamed coffee from the pot always on the great black iron wood-stove. Today, I buy my quart of cream and it becomes sauces usually made of only a few common  ingredients. Butter, cream, flour, and seasoning. The sauce is used fresh or saved and frozen for for later. A common sauce makes all. The recipe is simply melted butter in a skillet, poured in thick cream and when stirred to hot, but never boiled, adding in a little flour and whatever herbs or spices and you have the beginnings of ethereal sauces to come. This sauce when thickened gently might own lemon grass or juice to taste, salted along with fresh cracked pepper to make with prociutto on a bun, Eggs Benedict. Or if you love curried anything, add your favorite one for pouring on rice or pasta or a crepe or chicken or beef, adding as much red or green pepper heat of any kind you enjoy. I adore crepes that I keep in the freezer to become a "plate" on which I can pile anything just the right presentable size,  then add the cream sauce flavoured in whatever savory ways I am in a mood for. Giving it a zap for heat or into the oven as you wish. And of course, the snippings from the scallions standing always in their vase beside the black swan kitchen tap, add a heady freshness that crowns your dish however humble made luxurious because it is all of  your own hand. The French are saucy folks who know that it is exactly where the golden mother lode exists. It's all in the sauce. Why? Because even in Napoli where they fry their pasta left over or freshly boiled and drained, comes a heavenly sauce with added cream and mashed garlic  and oregano with its friends and finally, that marvellous Mozarella or Parmesan cheese melting over all.  Don't forget a basket of French bagguette torn from the slender loaf in which to dip  your Balsamic vinegar and EV olive oil while you savour the pasta rolling on the fork just before your anticipation mouth. Mmmm!