Re: Hot Buttered Rum

I'll begin my response to comments on the last post by saying that I too love roasted chestnuts, but now love roasted hazelnuts even more.

Leah asked "How could butter and rum taste good together? How I ask you?" In turn I ask her: how could it not?

Brendan writes that "Butter's power to transform good things into fantastic things surpasses its dubious reputation as fatty dairy stuff."

True, though aren't fatty and transformative synonyms?

And finally, to respond to Ezra's questioning my tongue in cheek recipe proportions. See below for the revised recipe, the result of a bathrobe clad conference with my downstairs neighbor just moments ago. (I had to assure her that I wasn't going to make it now, at 10:30am)

But the safest answer to how much butter you want to use is to start small and add "to taste." That way, regardless of how much butter anyone else says you should use, you'll end up using how much you think you should use. I don't like cheesecake, so the best cheesecake in the world is to me still not good cheesecake. The amount of butter in h.b.r. is relative as applied to the general population, but to you personally it is absolute.

And best of luck with braising. May it ease your November 4th-addled brain.

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Recipe: Hot Buttered Rum, Revised

1 shot of rum
1 "restaurant sized" pad of butter
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 dash nutmeg
1 cup milk

Warm, combine, enjoy.