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LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 5.16 81 DINE IN Ghee Whiz By Mary Welp / Illustration by Carrie Neumayer Te time has come to speak of ghee (with a hard g ). Consider how many great, simple words it rhymes with — practically one for every letter in the English alphabet, yet it is a Hindi term derived from Sanskrit. By now, most serious gourmets and gourmands (and even just some regular Joes and Joellas who tend to frequent health-food stores) know that ghee is clarifed butter loaded with saturated fat, which, contrary to long-held opinions "based on scientifc research," is considered a superfood better for you than a feld full of kale. Tis is a far cry from the way I frst came across ghee in the 1970s. In her 1973 cookbook An Invitation to Indian Cooking, Madhur Jafrey begins by extolling the deliciousness of ghee and its importance, in particular, to Punjabis, "a tall, strong people" deriving their "spirit and immense energy" in large part from ghee, commonly doling out a daily spoonful to each child "in pretty much the same way American parents pop vitamin pills into their children's mouths." But then Jafrey goes on to say that for much of the population of India, the cow is far too sacred to be used in such a way; plus it's a time-consuming heap of trouble to make ghee, so nearly everyone uses unsaturat- ed vegetable oil in their cookery anyway. Tis was particularly good to know, given that ghee was, in the 1970s, just about impossible to fnd in any American grocery outside New York. I read Jafrey's ghee instructions (which involved simmering butter for an hour, then letting it cool before straining the water and milk solids through muslin), took her at her word that most recipes were already compli- cated enough without ghee, and went on my merry way for the next 35 years preparing all Indian dishes with olive oil. Never once did I make a Jafrey dish that did not brim with crowd-pleasing favor. Ten again, never once did I make a dish that was the insane gluttony-inducing extravaganza of your basic lamb vindaloo in even the grottiest Indian dive in a strip mall. Te reason? Ghee. In the meantime, ghee has become the new edamame. Remember a few years back when coconut oil became the rage? Foodsters who had previously condemned it to the deepest re- cesses of cardiovascular diabetic hell began to extoll it as a cure-all for everything — acne, Alzheimer's, dandruf, sexual dysfunction and possibly global terror. You were not just supposed to fry and bake with it and stir it into your espresso but to rub it all over yourself and your pets and even eat it straight from the jar. Whole Foods could not restock the shelves fast enough. Well, coconut oil is still a thing. And when it comes to recipes from certain regions of the world (Tailand, for example), you can't beat it for complementing the favors of the other ingredients. On the other hand, you wouldn't want to use coconut oil to make a marinara sauce. Or to try to cure melanoma. Anyway, that same faddishness is now going on with ghee. It's become a panacea for mortality itself. And while I do not give a monkey's toenail about any of its Ayurvedic healing properties or the fact that it's lac- tose-free, the important point is: Some truly top-notch ghee is available in virtually every grocery store. If you don't believe me, Google "ghee Walmart," where you'll fnd that you can buy the brand Purity Farms by the six- pack. Some product descriptions these days sound as if they were written for an episode of Portlandia: "…made in harmony with na- ture, from organic sweet cream butter from pastured cows on small, certifed organic family farms. Honoring a traditional Indian method, pure organic butter is slowly cooked to coax out water and milk solids." Coax! But, people, this is what we want. We want ghee to be available for cooking in a way that Madhur Jafrey did not fathom all those decades ago. We want to be able to buy it in the same store where we buy our sunscreen and our orange juice. Why? Because ghee really does have that rich and nutty depth of favor Jafrey was homesick for, the favor that makes not just Indian food but also anything else you might cook in olive oil or butter taste that much better. Try a taste test. Make one batch of scrambled eggs (or grilled cheese or any kind of panini) using your regular amount of butter or vegetable oil and another batch using a half-teaspoon of ghee. A signifcant reason for its superiority is its high smoking point, allowing you to sauté or fry at a much higher heat without it burning. Even when not using a coated pan, you need only a fraction as much ghee as any other fat. Have I mentioned that the jar it comes in is the perfect size and shape for keeping right next to your stove? It's not as if I don't still eat olive oil most days of my life, but regular butter? Not so much. Without enumerating all the recipes for which I have swapped out butter for ghee, here is a simple, handy sauce I whipped up not long ago that I have been loving in place of hollandaise or tartar sauce atop almost any type of meat, fsh or steamed, chilled vegetables, especially asparagus. Sauce 1 tablespoon of ghee 1 shallot, minced 1 tablespoon of parsley, snipped ¼ teaspoon of dried dill weed 1 cup of Greek yogurt ¼ cup of mayonnaise ½ teaspoon of capers, drained Juice from half a lemon Freshly ground pepper, to taste More snipped parsley to taste In a small saucepan, melt the ghee over medium-high heat. Add the shallot and sauté until golden-brown. Stir in the parsley and dill and remove the pan from the heat. While the ghee mixture is cooling, whip togeth- er the yogurt and mayonnaise. Stir in the remaining ingredients. Stir the ghee mixture into this and whisk in the lemon juice. You can either serve it immediately or chill and bring it back to room temperature later. For use on fried fsh sandwiches, add dashes of pure horseradish and habañero sauce. This hyper-clarifed butter is all the rage now — and rightly so.