Butter with added flavours

I love butter. All through my 20's I didn't really eat it because "it is so bad for you" and evil fat monsters will come and deposit lumps all over your body if you don't watch out!

I moved in with Nic in my late 20's (thank god) and very quickly all my skim and low fat products soon got replaced with full cream this and high in fat that- that's right butter was put back in the fridge. When I first said to Nic "Oh no this is all bad....don't you read about it?" Nic just looked at me and said something along the lines of "Yeah well the skim stuff tastes like crap and if your going to eat you might as well enjoy it, just don't eat so much of it", to this he continued on with his day and took his then 28 inch waist out of the kitchen and left me weighing up what he had just said.

In the end I agreed with him and welcomed the new fridge arrivals, I mean the guy was smaller than I back then..... who was I to argue?

Last night I had brought steaks for dinner along with brussel sprouts and not much else but I decided I'd grill the steaks, roughly mash some spuds with olive oil and salt (seems to be a favorite of mine lately) then serve them with roasted brussel sprouts which I just love- they have a nutty almost sweet flavour that compliment steak beautifully. The kids on the other hand think I am nuts and reckon they smell like old feet so green beans for them!

Because the rest of the meal was quick and simple to I wanted something else to kind of bring it all together- straight away I thought of garlic butter. Jam packed with flavour, yet complimenting both meat and veg.

Of course the butter was still rock hard when I got it out of the fridge and we don't have a microwave to speed up the process so my next brainwave was to make it in my mortar and pestle- perfect!

Firstly I popped 2 cloves of garlic in the mortar with a good pinch of salt to help release the flavour and produce a paste, secondly I cut my butter into small dice so I could break it down faster. The pounding of the very cold butter released all the tension I was carrying from listening to the boys whinging and carrying on about tidying up their room so the calming effect of pounding butter was much appreciated.

With the butter and garlic melded together I thought it could do with some parsley (but of course, a classic really) and then always the chilli freak I ground a few flakes into the mix for a small punch of heat. By the time I had finished the butter, it was at the perfect room temperature to serve; the sprouts were cooked, potato was keeping warm and all that was left was to cook the steaks.

Dinner was ready without much effort, the boys had finally tidied their room and I had extra garlic butter to store in the freezer for another meal, be it chicken, roast veggies or another steak, so everyone wins.

All in moderation and who needs a 20 something inch waist in your 30's anyway!

YUMM!