Baked Sour Dough with Brie and Chive Butter, Green Tomato Chutney

Photo by Jun Pang

So, we have been through compound butters before.

If you can’t remember, a quick re-cap.  It is basically “flavoured” butter.  Simply put, you take softened butter, place it in a mixer and add flavourings such as nuts, herbs etc.  Depending on what you are going to use the butters for will depend on the ingredients you put into the butter for flavour.  For example, chopped herbs with lemon zest will go great with flavouring fish, a little bit of Jus (refined juices from a roast, most home cooks would call it “gravy”) and some type of fruit jelly with chopped herbs would go great with grilled beef and so on.

Most compound butters acts as a sauce in essence.  This type of compound butter is the flavouring agent and adds moisture to the bread.  The butter used for “garlic breads” is a type of compound butter.

I have added cheese to this butter for an extra element of flavour and goes well with aged sour dough bread.  If you exchange the cheese from brie to a blue cheese or a “stinky” wash rind cheese like a talegio, then you can perhaps use that in pastas.  Simply blanch pasta, a fusili perhaps, add to a heated pan with a little normal butter, add garlic and broccolini, toss the pasta through then finish with knobs of this “stinky” cheese  compound butter with lashings of herbs and you have a flavoursome and quick meal.

Make plenty of this butter as mentioned in prior blogs and freeze it in small batches and when ever you have limited time to make a meal, take a protein, add this on top and simply bake in the oven, grill or toss through a heated pan and there you go, a meal in seconds.

The chutney can also be used in many ways.  In this recipe, the acidity from the green tomatoes simply counter balances the richness of the compound butter, really smoothing out the palate.  The vincotto is also great for sweetness with a type of “prune” flavour  finish.

This dish does act as a great starter to a meal but it can also be a meal in its self.  Add some sliced parma ham, some dressed rocket and you have a complete and appetising light meal.

Photo by Jun Pang

Baked Sour Dough with Brie and Chive Butter, Green Tomato Chutney

Enough for 4 people

1 Sour Dough Loaf

For the green tomato chutney:

1kg Green Cherry  Tomatoes

300ml Cider Vinegar

400gr Brown Sugar

1 Brown Onion – diced

1 Cinnamon Stick

5 Star Anise

For the compound butter:

300gr Brie – softened

200gr Butter – softened

1 Bunch Chives – finely sliced

To Finish:

2 Punnets Baby Herbs

Vincotto

Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO)

Method

For the green tomato chutney:

1. Place the tomatoes, vinegar, sugar, onion, cinnamon stick and start anise in a pot.  Cook for about 3 hours on low heat, continually stirring until it breaks down and looks and states like a chutney.  May need to adjust sugar quantity depending on the tomatoes.

For the compound butter:

1. Place the butter and brie in a mixer and mix using a paddle on low until it blends together.  It does not have to be super smooth, then add the chopped chives.
2. Cut deep slits into the loaf on a slight angle but do not cut through.
3. Butter the slits with the brie butter and cover with foil.
4. Bake at 180 degrees Celsius in an oven or Webber for about 10 minutes.

To finish:

1. Serve with tomato chutney on top and garnished with herbs.
2. Drizzle the vincotto and EVOO for dipping.

Vincotto – is cooked grape must.  Simply put, it is the residue that is left from pressing grapes then that residue is cooked for a long period of time until it is slightly caramelised.  The end product is thick, dark (almost black) liquid, similar to reduced balsamic.  The flavour is much like prunes but it can also be infused with flavourings such as fig and orange on production.  Great to finish a dish such as duck with high level of sweetness but can also be treated much the same way as a vinaigrette, emulsified with EVOO, salt and pepper and used in many salads.

Cafe de Paris Butter

Compound butters are probably one of the first things we learn at trade school. Simply put, it is butter with flavourings.  It’s used much like a sauce for many dishes like on roasted vegetables or to toss through freshly blanched beans, on roasted fish, cut into small discs and stuffed in between the skin and flesh of chickens ready for roasting for moisture and flavour and traditionally,it is used on grilled meats, mainly as a sauce or in corporation with a jus to monte the jus with more flavour.

There are then obviously heaps of different types of compound butters.  For example, truffle butter.  Grated truffle folded into whipped butter with some chopped herbs, usually used to go in between the skin and flesh of poultry such as a poussin.  Roasted beetroot, pureed then folded into butter for roasted vegetables and the list goes on. Other types include anchovy butter, red wine butter, port and muscatel butter, ground almond butter and so on.  The list is virtually endless, it all depends on what dish you want to use it in.

So this is the time to be a little creative.  Use your initiative, for example, herbs would go great with blanched vegetables so use herb butter.

Cafe de Paris butter was not invented in cafe in Paris as the name would suggest but rather by a chef named Freddy Dumont in 1941 in a restaurant called “Cafe de Paris” – funnily enough!  It was used predominantly on grilled sirloins and made this restaurant in it’s time very popular.  It still operates today and still makes the famed butter which ships to other restaurants all over the world trade marked as being the original version.  Today, there are many recipes of this butter out there but I have been using this very same recipe since I started cooking a long time ago and I’m still convinced that if made properly, it’s still the best!

Photo by Jun Pang

Café de Paris Butter

1kg Butter

1 cup Tomato Ketchup

4 tsp Dijon Mustard

2 tsp Capers

½ Cup Parsley                                   Finely chopped

½ Cup Chives                                   Finely Chopped

¼ Cup Marjoram                               Finely Chopped

¼ Cup Dill                                         Finely Chopped

¼ Cup Tarragon                                Finely Chopped

2 Cloves Garlic                                  Finely Chopped

10 Anchovy Fillets                            Finely Chopped

2 Tblspn Brandy

1 Tblspn Worcestershire Sauce

½ Tspn Curry Powder

Pinch Cayenne

Juice of 1 Lemon

Juice of 2 Oranges and Zest

Method

1. Place all the ingredients in a bowl except for the butter.  Allow it to sit over night at room temperature
2. Place the softened butter in a kitchen aid or a mixer with a paddle attachment
3. Whip on high speeds until it starts to change colour sightly, lighter yellow colour
4. Place the herb mix into the mixer and mix on slow speed
5. Mix well then place into jars or roll it into logs by using kitchen paper then in foil, then use the foil to roll it in tight log
6. Make small batches and you can freeze it so it can be more user friendly

Truffle – is a subterranean funghi (mushroom that grows under ground).  Very pungent, unique aroma that is so strong it can flavour porous ingredients, for example if stored with arborio rice for a period of time you can make truffled risotto, it will take on the flavours of the truffle, same with eggs for truffled eggs.  Highly priced in French, Spanish and Italian cuisine, truffles have hundreds of varieties with the most prized being the white truffle or Alba madonna found in the country side of Alba, Italy.  Truffles are highly regarded in kitchens and can fetch hundreds of dollars per kilo

Poussin – is a young or juvenile chicken weighing in at 400-550gr, no older than 28 days old.  In Australia, it is also known as spatchcock

Muscatel – is from the grapes called muscats. It is left on the vine to ripen until it resembles raisins.  It is very intense in sweetness and has a beautiful pruney, sweet flavour.  Used a lot as dried fruit condiment or on cheese plates

Monte – in cooking terms it suggests to mount, meaning to mount with butter for example.  Monte au beurre means to mount with butter or finish with butter.  Usually referring to jus mounted with butter to flavour extension, body and silky, shiny finish to a jus