To clarify butter, melt it over low heat, skim off and discard the scum that forms on top,

remove the pot from the heat, and let the solid sediments settle for a few minutes to the bottom.

Pour off the clear liquid that is now the clarified butter. It is pure fat that has changed to liquid

oil. Discard the solids (that is the milk solids) remaining in the pan. One pound (450 g) butter

gives you 12 ounces (340 g) of clarified butter.

Unsalted butter

Many recipes specify unsalted butter—supposedly its flavor is better than salted butter’s.

This is true. Since it is more perishable than salted butter, its shelflife is shorter and retail stores

keep it for a shorter period, thus it remains fresher. When you use unsalted butter, you can

control how much salt is going into your batter or cooking pot. You cannot tell for sure how

much processors have added to the salted kind. Usually it is 1.5 to 1.8 percent, which translates

to about 1¾ teaspoons salt in a pound (about 4 teaspoons in a kilo) of butter. If you prefer the

salted flavor, you have a better deal buying unsalted butter and sprinkle salt over the butter on

your bread or in your cooking.

Heating cheese

There is an enormous variety of cheeses, and their cooking behavior also varies widely.

As a general rule, expose cheese to heat for the shortest time possible. In many dishes the rule is:

just until melted (if the cheese is part of the dish) or until melted and slightly browned (if

sprinkled on top). Overcooking cheese breaks it down and separates it into a stringy mass

floating on an oily soup. What happens is that the main milk protein, casein in the cheese

coagulates and separates from the liquid, which is water and melted fat. This process is curdling,

a bitter enemy of cooks.

Soft, high-moisture, barely-aged cheeses are particularly susceptible to curdling. Their

protein that curdles is casein, that hasn’t been broken down much by aging. In hard, well-ripened

cheeses, the casein is in smaller pieces that coagulate less readily. Whenever you are adding

cheese to other hot ingredients, continue to heat it carefully and with constant stirring, because

you can break down casein even after you’ve fully incorporated the cheese with other

ingredients. The more cheese in the concoction, the more careful you need to be. Once casein is

broken down and the cheese curdles, you cannot reverse the process. The flavor doesn’t suffer,

however, so if the dish is not unappetizing, unsavory-looking you can still serve it and enjoy it.

Don’t mention it to anyone and no one is likely to notice it.

To minimize curdling, use grated or finely-chopped cheeses when cooking. The smaller

the individual pieces, the faster they melt. In many dishes you don’t even need to heat the cheese.

If you add cheese to a hot dish, the heat of the dish may be enough to melt it smoothly.

Adding starch to the dish—cornstarch or flour—along with the cheese prevents curdling

for some reason that food scientists haven’t yet figured out.

You may also have had problem with cheese turning stringy on cooking. This is due to a

chemical, calcium phosphate, that some cheeses contain. This substance links the already long

protein molecules together to form even longer strings. To prevent stringy cheese in a cooked

dish, add a squeeze of lemon juice to the cheese before stirring it into the hot food. The citric

acid binds with the calcium phosphate and prevents the formation of long interlinked molecules.

Wine does the same but not quite as effectively. Your cheese fondue with white wine shouldn’t

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