BENGALURU: At the very beginning of my cooking career back in France, I remember having to make hazelnut butter. Hazelnut butter? I would think, what is that, and how to you actually make it?
“Lo and behold,” the chef told me, “it’s very easy. Place your block of butter in a deep pan and melt it over a gas range until you get hazelnut butter.” Right, I thought, the butter would change into an hazelnut?!
Anyway, I followed the instructions given and waited in front of the gas range, and yes the butter melted and carried on melting to a point where it became a clarified butter and keeping it to simmer would soon turn it into an hazelnut butter for the pure and simple reason that it would change color and give a nutty aroma. Et voila, hazelnut butter was made.
I have used it then and till to date only for making Madeleine’s and Financiers which are small moist cake.
I have also discovered that the same process is being used in Indian homes to make ghee. It’s more or less a similar process but here’s the difference. Readymade ghee you get in the market is not taken that far, in the sense that it is still whiter than European hazelnut butter. However, I learnt that homemade ghee, the kind you find tucked in small glass jars in the corner of a kitchen cabinet, is the one that has a stronger aroma, browner color, quite similar to hazelnut butter. It’s such a discovery that something I thought was restricted to a European cuisine is actually a very down to earth ingredient in Indian homes.
— Olivier Vincenot,Corporate Chef, Foodhall