From Butter to Buns

via New Season Asparagus, Ritual, Good China & a Hungarian Folktale

Dearest Gentle Reader,

I’m back and before I go any further, I must give you a butter warning, ridiculous amounts of warm melting butter in fact. So if you just don’t like butter, don’t eat if for dietary reasons or are avoiding it in a general fashion then this letter is not for you. You should put it down and back away gently.

Is there anyone still here? If so then I will explain, possibly at too much length. I am very seasonal about some specific much loved foods: hot cross buns, mince pies, fresh tomatoes and English asparagus. I only eat mince pies after 1 December, I only eat fresh tomatoes when they come into season, I only eat English asparagus in season and I only eat hot cross buns on Good Friday and Easter bank holiday weekend. I know its weird but I love all of these things and truly appreciate every mouthful because they are time restricted.

What has this got to to with a warning around gentle streams of warm melted butter? Well today was Good Friday so I got to eat my first two hot cross buns of the year. I don’t know how you eat yours but I have a ritual now. Firstly I feed the cat, this is essential but only because he’s noisy when hungry and likes to share. Secondly, I make sure that a good china plate is clean and available and my favourite china mug is to hand. Thirdly, boil the kettle for tea because the tea needs to be brewing before you can toast the hot cross buns as hot cross buns are much more delicate than crumpets and muffins and can burn easily due to the fruit. Fourthly, toast buns whilst tea is brewing. Fifthly, get ice cold salted butter and slice it thinly onto finger burningly hot toasted buns. Sixthly, finish off mug of tea by removing tea bag and adding milk. Seventhly and finally, spread out pools of melted butter evenly over buns.

Enjoy hot, spiced fruity buns whilst dripping butter on your chin, licking butter off your fingers and slurping just too hot tea. This is a very personal ritual and should remain solitary unless you are lucky enough to know anyone that will understand your need to throw all manners out the window, in pursuit of the annual moment that is the perfect bun, melted butter, hot tea sensory explosion.

Coincidentally, due to the lateness of Easter this year, today was also my first taste of Asparagus since last May. Another ritual, also requiring a slightly larger china plate plus another china mug. Firstly collect appropriate crockery, secondly boil the kettle because you need it for both items. Thirdly make tea and leave to brew, fourthly boil/steam your asparagus using the remainder of your kettle water for around 5 minutes but this will depend on how soft you like your asparagus and how thick it is. Fifthly, drain your asparagus and dot all over with ice cold butter on the nice china plate. Sixthly finish off your tea and take it and the plate of asparagus to a comfortable seat.

Enjoy asparagus whilst dripping butter on your chin, licking butter off your fingers and slurping just too hot tea. This is another very personal ritual and should remain solitary unless you are lucky enough to know anyone that will understand your need to throw all manners out the window, in pursuit of the annual moment that is the perfect asparagus, melted butter, hot tea sensory explosion. The only change I will accept here is swapping the tea for a glass of ice cold cava or New Zealand sauvignon blanc but must stipulate that the wine should be so cold that condensation appears instantly on the outside of the glass. Neither tea nor wine is better than the other, they are just different, each intoxicating in their own way.

I think that explains the excessive butter warning. What it doesn’t explain is why I adore and stick to these rituals but am also trying to be the sort of person that always uses the good china, always uses the good glasses and enjoys every meal as if it is special, even if it involves fish fingers. Will the second mean that I get even more enjoyment from my annual food rituals or will they loose something, maybe mean less? I’d hate to loose them, they are part of what is already a tenuous link to the ever changing cycles of life and seasons. This is definitely going to need more thought. I’m conflicted but whatever conclusions I finally come to, I still think one good shortcut to contentment will remain messy, warm, melted butter.

I’ve found you a lovely Egg/Rabbit story for Easter, just in case you are less of a butter person than me:

Once upon a time, in a small kingdom, far, far away there was a small parish. The gamekeeper of the parish was tramping across a meadow one day when he saw a prodigiously enormous pumpkin on the ground.

‘Well, I never!’ he exclaimed in amazement, ‘what in the name of wonder is that?’

He’d seen some marrows in his time, long and striped or fat and smooth, but never before in his life had he seen such a huge round yellow thing as this. He picked it up, felt it, smelt it, but he couldn’t make head or tail of it. So he took it to the village hall, where the Parish Council happened to be in session. The gamekeeper placed the pumpkin on the council table. The wise Councillors looked at it and were equally flabbergasted. They stared at the pumpkin and they stared at each other.

Then the wisest and oldest of them all spoke up: ‘I have had a very long life, but never in my born days have I seen the like of this before. What could it be?’

The second wisest and oldest Councillor took his turn: ‘I, too, have been through a lot in my life, but this is beyond my experience.’ And he cast an enquiring look at the third wisest and oldest Councillor.

‘As to that,’ said he, ‘I have some experience of most things myself, but this object defeats me. Let us hear what our Mayor thinks, as he is the wisest of us all.’

The Mayor stood up and spoke solemnly:

‘Honourable Councillors, I declare that this object — judging by its shape — is an egg.’

Wherewith the Councillors felt themselves instantly enlightened. ’Of course it’s an egg! What else could it possibly be?’

The gamekeeper himself agreed, and remembered how warm the pumpkin had felt when he first picked it up in the meadow. But the Mayor wasn’t Mayor for nothing. He also wanted to know precisely what kind of egg this was.

‘A dragon’s egg!’ exclaimed the oldest Councillor.

‘A camel’s!’ announced another.

But the Mayor preferred to consult the gamekeeper. That worthy man recalled that when he first noticed the pumpkin he saw a strange, large, four-legged animal in the vicinity. It was running and it had a mane and a long hairy tail!

Now it so happened that at that time, in that small parish, horses were rarely if ever seen. The peasants only had oxen for their ploughs and carts. They even went to weddings by oxcart.

But the Mayor, who wasn’t Mayor for nothing, had certainly seen horses and mares in his time due to his importance.

‘It is a mare’s egg!’ he cried triumphantly. The Councillors were nonplussed. ‘But how could that be?’ asked one of them. ‘Mayors do not lay eggs. With respect, Mr Mayor, even you cannot lay an egg.’

The Mayor looked pained. ‘I know that,’ he said impatiently. ‘And I haven’t got a long hairy tail either. No. I mean the egg of a mare. M.A.R.E. A horse of the female kind, a lady horse’

The Councillors listened attentively and suddenly light dawned. Their faces lit up and they were delighted that the Mayor had solved the mystery. ‘Naturally! That’s it! Who else but a horse could have laid such a prodigiously enormous egg?'

‘Fellow Councillors,’ announced the Mayor, ‘we have done well so far. The question now arises, however, as to what we should do with it.’

‘Hatch it!’ came the unanimous reply. ‘Yes, indeed, but how? We have no horses.’

There was silence. Everybody pondered for a while. They thought and thought and racked their brains. But it was the Mayor, once more, who found the solution. ‘I am of the opinion,’ he said, ‘that we should take this splendid egg and hatch it ourselves!’

There was again general agreement among the Councillors. To set a good example, the Mayor took it upon himself to sit on the egg first. He was followed by the others in turn, according to age and precedence. Each of them sat for a day. Exactly as broody hens do. The Council would have continued to sit in turn on the pumpkin ’til Doomsday except for a rumour which emanated from the neighbouring village. It was said there that the worthy Councillors were sitting on an addled egg!

It must have been addled because it hadn’t hatched! Hearing this, the Councillors expostulated and refused to sit on

the mare’s egg any further. The Mayor was deeply wounded. He could have sworn that the little foal was already moving inside the egg. He shook it. He smelt it. He required the Councillors to smell it themselves. But the Councillors refused to listen to him. According to them, the egg had a distinct smell. It was addled!

After a long discussion, however, it was decided that the addled egg should be taken to the parish border and placed on the top of the hill, whence it could be rolled down towards the very village which was so insolent in its disparagement of the Parish Council.

Image credit: Hungarian Folktales - Val Biro

The whole parish came out to witness the occasion and to see that slanderous village next door get what it deserved. The egg was brought forth. Certainly, it smelt to high heaven. The Mayor wheeled it up the hill in his barrow and, as everyone was holding his nose, he lifted it out and rolled it downhill all by himself. The egg rolled and rolled until, at the bottom of the hill, it rolled into a hawthorn bush. It must have hit a stone because it broke to smithereens. And at that very instant, a small rabbit sprang out of the bush and the whole parish broke into triumphant shouts:

‘The foal! Look! There goes the little horse! After him!

The entire population sprang up and began to run after the rabbit. Only the Mayor remained standing on top of the hill, surrounded by his Councillors. Seeing that it was useless to run because he knew that nobody could catch up with the swift little creature, he drew himself up.

‘Did I not tell you,’ he sighed, ‘that the foal was already moving? You should have been a little more patient.’

The Councillors stood around in silence and looked at him with a new respect. He certainly wasn’t their Mayor for nothing.

I adapted this from a story known as The Mayor’s Egg that I found in a collection of Hungarian folk tales retold by Val Biro.

And now for a little hot cross bun lore before I go: Elizabeth I actually banned the sale of spiced buns and spiced breads except for Good Friday, Christmas Day and burials due to the popularity of these breads and the connection to the Catholic Church. It wasn’t just Oliver Cromwell who was judgey about highly seasonal food products. It is believed that a hot cross bun baked on Good Friday will never mould or stale and one hidden in the eaves will protect the house from fire. I’d probably still make sure the smoke detectors had batteries though, just in case.

Finally It was apparently also once a custom on Good Friday for good friends to hold a hot cross bun together and recite ‘Half for you, half for me Between us two good luck shall be’ and then break the bun in two. This was said to cement the friendship for another year. It does seem dreadfully impractical as surely both parties would get butter all over themselves?

With that Gentle Reader, I must leave you. I promise to be back soon, possibly with a less messy topic.

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