Recipe: Garlic herb butter

This recipe for garlic herb butter is good for many uses because the garlic in it has already been cooked and therefore not too aggressive.  In addition to garlic bread, you may want to use it to finish a sauce or even put it out as a table butter.  The olive oil and lemon serve two purposes - they add a nice flavour dimension and they give the finished butter a helping hand when softening up after coming out of the fridge.  As I never keep salted butter around, we'll use unsalted here - this is nice since we can control how salty the butter is and even choose the salt we want to use.  A smoked salt is great here, but you may want to grind it a bit finer since many smoked salts are made from the chunkier Maldon variety.

You will need:

454g / 1lb                  unsalted butter (room temperature)

10 sprigs                    thyme

1/2 bunch                  parsley

1 sprig (small)           tarragon

5 leaves                     basil

10 cloves                   roasted or poached garlic

30ml / 2Tbs               extra virgin olive oil

10ml / 2tsp                fresh squeezed lemon juice

to taste                      kosher salt

Method:

 - separate the leaves of all the herbs from their stems and chop fine

 - mash and chop the roast garlic to a paste

 - put the butter in a mixer with a paddle and mix to soften (a bowl and wooden spoon will work too)

 - slowly drizzle in the olive oil and mix until it is fully incorporated

 - add the lemon juice and mix in

 - add the roast garlic and herbs and mix well

 - season with salt

 - store in the fridge until use if not using right away