Burro di Bufala

Once upon a time, in a land far far away (just over the Brooklyn Bridge) there lived a Beautiful Princess and a Handsome Prince who decided that if they were ever going to live together in peaceful harmony then they should never go food shopping together...EVER!

The Handsome Prince's approach to food shopping was always methodical and efficient. Make a list, go to store, go straight to aisle where listed items can be found, place in cart, head to register, check out, go home, unpack, put away, done. The Beautiful Princess's approach to food shopping always started out methodical and efficient but somehow... forces so dark and evil, whose names should only ever be whispered in polite company always conspired against our brave young Lass. Things never happened quite as they had been planned. Lists that had taken days to write would get left behind. Items, which had no immediate use or need, were thrown into the cart, as if our young Princess were possessed. Meals, which had been planned with ease of ingredients and efficiency of preparation in mind suddenly became elaborate concoctions with difficult and often death defying technique requiring many many many new ingredients. The Princess would wander the aisles for days...(ok hours), marveling at all there was for the taking. It was too much for such a blossoming young cook. Every trip to the market almost always ended with the purchase of some exotic item, some temptation that our young Heroine (brave and strong willed as she is) could not resist.

Fast forward to the present ...

And that is how I ended up with the above in my grocery bag the other day. I saw it on the shelf in the butter section of the market and of course I could not resist buying and trying it out. (Hey, I'm strong but the evil forces are strong too). Doing my best to translate, basically it says: " butter from the cream deriving from the working of the mozzarella of milk of bufala"

What I was expecting was a yellow or gold looking butter with a creamy texture and a strong slightly salty taste of bufala mozzarella. I was thinking it would taste similar to KerryGold or Plugra, which are yummy European style butters that I like to occasionally use when I want the butter to play a larger part in imparting its flavors in a dish.

What I got was a block of white butter that reminded me a LOT of Crisco. That is by no means a snarky comment about Crisco, I like Crisco and use it for piecrusts and other baking and I think very highly of it. I just didn't expect this new butter to look and well...sort of taste like Crisco too. I detected the slightest hint of bufala mozzarella in the after-taste and when I smell the butter its just slighly noticeable. Overall, my first and second impression of it was just... ennh. To be fair, I didn't try using it with cooking, and maybe that's where it will shine, perhaps in a pie crust or a veggie sauté, but as a butter to just spread on a hunk of bread and eat...well, no. I'll have to further test it out in some cooking before I can give an honest and fair final opinion. So far it hasn't won me over.

Written by Deb on April 15, 2003 12:05 AM