Homemade Cultured Butter

There is a milk farm at the edge of Saint Andiol called La Tapy. The farmer there runs around seventy dairy cows. We buy our milk from him rather than from the supermarket - partly because it is the right thing to do when you live somewhere, and partly because the milk is genuinely better. Richer, more flavourful, the kind of milk that reminds you what milk is supposed to taste like.

It reminds me of growing up. We had a small farm in South Africa - about twenty cows in the milkery. The milk came straight from the animal and had a layer of cream on top that was, frankly, ridiculous. The stuff you buy in boxes is a pale and homogenised approximation. Once you have lived near a working dairy, it is difficult to pretend otherwise.

In spring especially, when the new grass comes through and the cows are out on fresh pasture, the cream from La Tapy is extraordinary. That is when I make butter.

A few years ago I tried making cultured butter the old-fashioned way: creme fraiche in a glass bottle, shaking it until your arms gave out. I shook the bottle for longer than I care to admit and never got past the thick-cream stage. The solution was a stand mixer. What had been a twenty-minute failure in a bottle became a ten-minute job with a balloon whisk. The cream goes in cold, the whisk runs, and somewhere around the eight-minute mark something shifts and suddenly there is butter and buttermilk in the bowl.

When I make a batch I make enough to justify the effort. I use at least two litres - my record is five - and I divide it into three: natural (unsalted, for tasting and pastry), salted (fleur de sel folded in, for everyday use), and herb butter with garlic, parsley, thyme, and rosemary. The herb butter on braai potbread is a thing unto itself.