Garlic and Herb Butter

For some reason or other, my other half bought two 250 g packets of butter the other day. We needed to stock up on butter but ususally struggle to eat even on packet by its use-by-date. Instead of freezing some I decided to upgrade them first. The recipe for the tomato butter is here.

And because the herbs were from the garden I had lots of stalks left, I decided to make a summer vegetable stock as well.

Flavoured butter is wonderful to make garlic bread, use with barbecued food or simply spread on fresh bread or rolls. My favourite use for herb butter is on a rare steak, straight from the 70's. ;)

250 g unsalted organic butter, at room temperature
a couple of handfuls of fresh herbs, in this case flat leaf parsley, coriander, dill, fennel and thyme from the garden
1 whole-bulb garlic
freshly grated black pepper
sea salt

You can make this in a food processor buy adding the coarsely chopped herbs, garlic, pepper and salt to the utter and blizzing the ingredients into a smooth creamy paste.

If you haven't one of those, simply place the butter on a board and use a fork to spread it out a bit. Season with pepper and salt. Finely chop the herbs, crush the garlic and scatter onto the butter. Using a fork work everything into a paste.

To freeze, tear off a piece of cling film, place the herb butter on top. Bring in the longer sides and roll into a sausage. Twist the ends, cover in tin foil and put into the freezer. You can then cut off the amount you need in slices, which will defrost really quickly.