Butter by Asako Yuzuki: The Meals and Recipes

Read Time:8 Minute, 45 Second

Last year, I put Butter by Asako Yuzuki in my top 5 books of all time due to the way Yuzuki described food and used it as a powerful tool for control, indulgence and personal desires. As Rika realises about Kaiji: That was why her food had the wild deliciousness of something attained through black magic. Food is a powerful tool in Butter that blurs the line between nourishment and temptation, and left me hungry for more.

Although these are not spicy, reading it made me crave every dish mentioned so I decided to compile as many foods and recipes from Asako Yuzuki’s novel. Pictures are not mine but I would love for an artist to illustrate these images.

辛い食べ物じゃないですけど、柚木麻子さんの本『バター』についてお話したいと思います。作者は食べ物を支配、耽溺そして個人的な欲望を形作る強力な道具として描いており、すぐに私のベスト5にランクインしました。主人公のリカがカイジについて言うように「彼女の料理はまるで黒魔術で手に入れたかのような、ワイルドな美味しさを持っていた」のです。そこで、柚木麻子さんの『バター』に登場する食べ物とレシピをすべてご紹介します。

Bagna Cáuda: With plentiful of steamed winter vegetables and a rich anchovy sauce, rice cooked in an earthenware pot with vegetables and chopped oysters, and miso soup, cooked by Reiko
Rice, Butter and Soy Sauce: A shining golden wave, with an astounding depth of flavour and a faint yet full and rounded aroma, wrapped itself around the rice.
Pollock Roe (明太子): The butter and rosy-coloured roe combination coats each and every spaghetti strand, bringing out that delicious semolina scent and generating a flavour that feels like a wave of kindness rising up uncontrollably from inside your chest. I like to top my version with a plentiful sprinkling of chopped shiso.
Yakimochi: The heady aroma that rose up through her nose, the crispiness of the skin as it broke open beneath her teeth, the silkiness of the gooey insides that spread themselves flat across every bit of flesh in her mouth and refused to let go
Christmas Cake: The buttercream creation was different to the cakes around it, their surfaces crowded with strawberries, ivy and edible sugar decorations. Aside from the wreaths and candles rendered in cream on its white top, the only decorations here were three flame-shaped biscuits and a sprinkling of ground pistachios and walnuts.
Jelly: A serving of clear jelly was brought out as the amuse bouche. It came in a heavy, elegant porcelain dish which she felt sure would have made her swoon.
Snow Crab: The next course to be served was a chilled dish of avocado and snow crab stacked delicately like layer cake, topped with a generous helping of caviar. The acidity of the pomengrate seeds that exploded juicly in her mouth accentuated the creamy richness of the avocado and the sweetness of the crab flesh. Their unbashed scarlet hue brought the colour palette of the whole plate to life.
Foie Gras: The grilled foie gras brought out next was accompanied by dried persimmons’ clinging, pervasive flavour. It seemed more like a sweet flaky meat – no less so than the foie gras, in fact, which was so exquisitely tender that it broke apart on the tongue, oozing thick-blood scented liquid.
Caramelised Pork: A plate of caramelised pork served with truggles and a silky corn mash was set down on the table. The candy that was secreted inside the mash popped up on Rika’s tongue.
Flounder: A plate of flounder in a white lemony sauce. The delicate yet fresh flavour palette, reminiscent of early summer, sent a welcome breeze rippling through Rika’s feverish excitement.
Garlic Butter Rice: Cloaked in their mantle of amber butter, the grains shimmied and danced before her eyes. There was a sizzle as the chef poured on some soy sauce, and then the short, spirited tango was over. Bowls of the glistening bronze rice appeared before them. Swathed in meat jus and butter, each and every grain shone potently. The rich, heady aroma of the soy sauce stoked Rika’s appetite. The garlic singed to a dep brown unleashed a perilous bitterness and astringency across her palate. Slippery with fat, the rice slid across the plane of her tongue and down her throat.
Shumai: The shumai recipe uses tenderised loin meat, as well as the usual pork mince. You knead the meat with plenty of finely chopped onions, load the mixture into the dumpling wrappers and steam them once, then freeze them. The freezing breaks down the cells of the onion, so that when you steam them again, the filling is smooth, juicy and slightly sweet.
Salt butter ramen: A bowl was placed unceremoniously on the counter in front of her. The only garnish for the noodles was sesame and spring onions. The two perfect squares of butter on top were already beginning to lose their shape in the clear broth, their outlines blurring messily. Beneath them floated the crinkled noodles with their potent yellow hue. Dissolved in the soup, the butter formed golden circles on its surface. Against the faint chicken base of the stock, she could detect the flavour of bonito. The broth was hot but it slipped down easiily, lubricating her painfully dry throat. Alone, the cheap butter had an overly milky tang, but in combination with the noodles and the soup, its flavour grew golden and staked its territory with a kind of violence.
Mizushima’s lunch: Fluffy egg enveloped pieces of pork and kamaboko on a bed of rice stained with soy sauce.
Quatre Quart (French Pound Cake): It’s a pound cake that usues equal amounts of egg, flour, butter and granulated sugar. 150 grams of each. It’s outstanding with lemon as well. Organic, Japan-grown lemons – grate in the zest. You can add vanilla essence too, and glaze the finished product with rum. preheat oven to 170 degrees.
Onigiri: Each individual grain of rice was so intensely sweet. Cutting the taste with the pumpkin pickles, pale pink millet roe and the umeboshi brought out with the rice, she worked her way through in small mouthfuls.
Noppe: Vegetables and kamaboko were simmered in a light dashi, and the whole thing decorated with a sprinkling of salmon roe.
Red rice – and cream stew were arranged on the plastic tablecloth. From among the grains of mochi rice stained a red poked large, puffy cowpeas. When she lifted the rice to her mouth, it resisted her bite with a pleasing stickiness. The flaky insides of the cowpeas spilled out from their skins, breaking up the rich taste of the rice.
Waffles from Niigata: The whipped butter had already started melting across the waffles’ latticd brown surface, creating a golden trickling waterfall that pooled in their hollows.
New Potatoes with Sado butter: The hot potatoes engorged with butter crumpled apart in her mouth and the steam rose up to the back of her throat. Inside her mouth, the mixture transformed into a smooth-textured crea, heavy and ich, which spread out hotly across her tongue. The Sado butter was relatively light in its taste, but had the same warmth and body as the other diary products she’d sampled in Niigata. The soy sauce drew out the sweetness and texture of the potatoes.
Gratin: Golden-brown breadcrumbs, the melted yellow cheese and the thin skin that had formed across the white sauce. Fry chopped onion dusted with flour in butter, and stir in the milk a little at a time. When that’s all absorbed, add in the macaroni and broccoli boiled in salted water, and prawns simmered in white wine. Then pour it all into the gratin tin, sprinkle it with cheese, breadcrumbs and parsley, and bake it in the oven for twenty minutes.
Soupe de Poisson: A spoonful of the tomato-coloured soup in front of her. The finished product was like liquid umami. It seemed to comprise the sweet, bitter and mellow tastes from every part of each of thee fish – from the very centres of their eyeballs.
Carrot, onion and cumin pie: Next, the roughly chopped seafood was added into the suet pan. The food processor whizzed, a torrent of flour and butter moving up and down. The refreshing acidity of the tomatoes tossed in next cleansed her chest. Cumin seeds were sprinkled on the carrots and onions being braised in the pain, and the moment they met its moisture, a smell that seemed to combine fragrant smoke, fried meats and nuts rose up. Tucking into the bite-sized pie decorated with the orange carrot flower, her eyes widened at how delicious the braised new onions and carrots were, the cumin perfectly drawing out their sweetness. The main dish of lamb, cut from the bone as soon as it was place on the table. Protected by its wall of sweet breadcrumbs, orange peel and fresh coriander the meat had the robust smell of a grassy plain.
Sea urchin: The vinegar in the beurre blanc sauce brought the creamy smoothness of the sea urchin into even starker relief. As the warm sea urchin was crushed on the surface of her tongue, it was transformed into sea-flavoured cream that blended seamlessly with the similarly rich taste of the flan pastry, redolent with egg yolk.
Lamb Pilaf: The lamb pilaf, stuffed vine-leaves, and roast peppers filled with pilau particularly caught her attention. The smooth boiled dumplings with their savoury yoghurt sauce fired up her appetite. At each bite of the bean salad, she could feel resolve rising up from the pit of her stomach.
Turkey: The bird’s legs came off first, then the upper part of the breast. Her movements with the nige were clean and efficient. As the inside of the turkey began to show from beneath its crisp brown skin, steam rose uo. Its cross-section looked like a joint of smooth pink ham. A pile of different kinds of cuts formed on the plate alongside the turkey, and its hazel-coloured bones were removed. The cavity that had seemed endless to her when she’d put her hand inside it appeared very small .The part filled with stuffing occupied less than a fifth of the bird’s overall volume. This was the meal Kajii wanted so badly to make that she’d had to kill three – no, five – men to do it. The meal that ended up rotting away unnoticed in her fridge
Post-turkey meal: Simmer the turkey bones and add in dashi, seasoning the broth with soy sauce and mirin. Then boil the soba noodles, chill them in cold water and drain them. Put the last remaining pieces of turkey meat into the hot dipping sauce along with yuzu rind.