It’s no secret that we North Americans (and probably Western Europeans and Australians) have a seriously dysfunctional relationship with food. It’s all or nothing with us; it’s gluttony or starvation. Food even in its most basic form, its most virgin, is still contested and argued about ad nauseam. Everyone I know it seems doesn’t eat something for one reason or another or if they do “embrace” all food then they do so in excess. I’m definitely not judging but really just making an observation. To be totally honest I’m completely guilty of this mentality as well. There are a couple things I don’t eat. Soy for example, I have tried to expunge from my diet (it apparently contains estrogen and I’m trying to be as manly as possible…I’ll let you know how it works out) the same goes for pork, though I’ve been slightly less successful with this one. Everything else I do is to the point of overindulgence. Terra Breads green olive sourdough doesn’t stand a chance in my house. I can finish one of those babies off in less than two hours. Two hours! That’s for a whole loaf of bread! Mind you I feel like a colossal sponge after but I always forget that fact when I’m cutting into its crusty goodness. Who do I think I am, Michael Phelps?
Everyone has something though. Matt won’t eat salt or drink 2% milk. My brother won’t eat anything that doesn’t say “low fat” on the label. My mom won’t eat strawberries, raspberries or avocados and the people at work, bless their cotton socks, won’t be caught in the same room as anything that contains butter, eggs or dairy. Try baking something that is missing all three of those, you’ll end up with a mug of hot water.
I think it’s butter though that is the most contested. The French seem to have made peace with the creamy emulsion but the rest of us can’t get seem to reconcile in the same way. I once had a friend that would put butter in everything she cooked. It was everywhere: stuffed into chickens, coated over Brussels sprouts, baked into cakes and cookies and pies and probably tossed into salads though I never wanted to ask and find out for sure. Everything she made tasted like butter. And it was delicious. Mind you, this friend’s relationship with food was just as dysfunctional as everyone else’s, just in a different way. The butter debate got me thinking though: how can one make something delicious and rich without at least a minor addition of this cerate? My project began, I was to reinvent or recreate the taste of butter in a recipe without actually using it or one of its more popular substitutes.
A Brownie. It was the perfect baked good with which to experiment. You can easily tell a brownie made from Franken-ingredients from one made with butter and flour and love. I decided to make a fudgey brownie without using flour or butter. No small task I assure you. I replaced the flour with black beans (seriously) and buckwheat (it’s not a grain I swear) and replaced the butter with a mixture of goat’s cheese, banana, and grape seed oil. It sounds more like a recipe for some strange lasagna but in the end it actually worked…almost. The brownies were rich and dense and had a ghost of buttery flavor about them but they still didn’t compare to the real McCoy that I had grown to love as a kid. My mom’s brownies are a stunning testament to the antidepressant powers of a chocolatey baked good…and they contain butter as a rule. The fact is, nothing is butter except butter, no matter how you slice (or melt) it. And as in baking, so too in life. Right?
Butter free ingred's
The older I get the more perceptive I have become (luckily), and I think that people are a lot like baked goods (leave it to me to compare life to food). Vancouver is a city seriously devoid of “real butter” people. I’m not referring to where they rank on the BMI index at all or whether or not they’re vegan, but how they are with those around them. “Genuine” isn’t a term I can use to describe the average person in this city. Sure, you may get a butter substitute every now and then and in the immortal words of a margarine-era Fabio, you just “can’t believe it’s not…” but you will see through the phony emollient sooner or later. The “butter substitute” people’s agenda becomes very clear pretty quick.
I consider myself really lucky because though most of my friends here in Vancouver have strange (sometimes oddly so) diet restrictions, they are indeed “real butter” people. They are authentic and honest and make the day-to-day seem that much richer. Some of my “true butter” people have moved away from the city (miss you Andrea), some have landed here and are thriving (hi Kalie) and some of them from other regions are considering a move. No matter where they are though, I know that they are a permanent fixture in my life and vice versa. True butter after all is thick and sturdy and doesn’t melt at room temperature and even if you only get it in small amounts, real butter is always satisfying. You can depend on butter.
Ultimately I guess butter can’t be reinvented and really, why would you want to? The only thing that imitation butter does is make you appreciate the real stuff that much more. Sure, you can temporarily fill up on ersatz baking once in a while but in the end, nothing beats a substantial brownie made with the goodness of real, sincere butter.
Butterless brownies
Degrees of... 