Most people, when they have a day off and the entire house to themselves, choose to laze around in their underwear and gorge themselves on leftover buche courtesy of the loveliest neighbor on the planet.
I, lucky as I am, had the opportunity to do both today, yet, dimwitted as I am, eschewed the near-nudity route in favor of equally comfy but nonetheless unrevealing clothes and yielded to the siren song of the kitchen. Time to cook/bake/chop/grate/sautée/braise/other lovely cooking verbs I have yet to learn.* It was decided, without my really having any choice in the matter.
What I wanted to make was also somehow magically predetermined: brown butter, aka. beurre noisette.
I, lucky as I am, had the opportunity to do both today, yet, dimwitted as I am, eschewed the near-nudity route in favor of equally comfy but nonetheless unrevealing clothes and yielded to the siren song of the kitchen. Time to cook/bake/chop/grate/sautée
What I wanted to make was also somehow magically predetermined: brown butter, aka. beurre noisette.
Taking my cue from Bon Appetit's Flavor of the Year feature, I indulged in brown butter
shortbread - I didn't have pecans on hand, but feel free to include them (1 cup pecans, toasted, which are ground into a find meal and added to the brown butter-butter-sugar-vanilla mixture) as the Bon Appetit recipe suggests.The feature repeatedly stated that making and using brown butter is "simple" and "oh so easy" but incessant reminders of "do not burn" made me wary. As luck
would have it, the butter, my eyebrows and my mother's kitchen survived, and the result was nothing short of delightful.I served the shortbread with an Italian wild plum preserve and hot tea, but these cookies would work with any favorite jam and are wonderful on their own.
Brown butter shortbread
Adapted from Bon Appetit, January 2008
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature, divided
2 cups sifted all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon coarse kosher salt 1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Melt 1/2 cup butter in small skillet over medium heat. Cook until dark amber, stirring often, about 6 minutes. Again, do not burn! Pour through fine strainer into small bowl. Chill just until firm, about 1 hour.
Preheat oven to 300 degrees F. Whisk flour and salt to blend. Here, Bon Appetit instructs to use an electric mixer to beat the brown butter, 1/2 of remaining butter and sugar in a large bowl until creamy. As I do not (yet!!) own an electric mixer, I did this by hand. I will say that it was unpleasant and, if you do have an electric mixer, by all means use it, but not before giving it a little kiss. Beat in vanilla (and ground pecans, if you are using them). Gradually beat in flour-salt mixture just to blend.
Transfer dough to a sheet of parchment paper. Form dough into a rectangle and place another sheet of parchment paper over it. Press or roll the dough into a 12x8-inch rectangle. Remove the top sheet of parchment and transfer dough on parchment to a baking sheet. Using a fork, pierce dough all over, spacing one inch apart.
Bake dough until golden brown and firm to touch, about 55 minutes.
Leaving shortbread on baking sheet, cut lengthwise into 8 strips. Cut each strip crosswise into quarters. Cool and eat.
These cookies can be saved for three days, stored airtight at room temperature.
*To anyone who is reading this, thank you and bear with me as I take my baby steps into the wondrous world of cooking-dom.
