World-renowned chefs reveal their colourful Butter Stories

The European Union and CNIEL, The French Dairy Board, are utilising the expertise of chefs from the Middle East, China, Hong Kong and Taiwan to showcase how they create naturally coloured sauces using the finest French butter and a range of bold ingredients to create visually enticing dishes.

From the home kitchen to Michelin star restaurants, butter has been at the epicentre of creating some of the tastiest sauces since Roman times. CNIEL has launched a new magazine, Butter Stories, which is highlighting how chefs incorporate the finest French butter into their recipes to produce outstanding taste, colour, and depth.

Marie-Laure Martin, International Project Manager from CNIEL, said: “In this new Butter Stories edition, our focus is on sauces made with French butter. For many chefs, sauces are the most important component of a dish. However, to create a great sauce, you need a great butter! Real dairy French butter enhances all the flavour of a sauce and gives it a deep texture.

“For the chefs featured the challenge truly allowed them to showcase their flair and ability to innovate cooking. Charcoal, beetroots, wasabi, turmeric, and squid ink were just some of the ingredients used to colour and add taste to their butter sauces in a natural way,” added Martin.

Representing the Middle East in the latest edition of the Butter Stories publication are Maroun Chedid of Ritage by Maroun Chedid located in Beirut and Riyadh, and Gilles Bosquet, Executive Chef at La Cantine Du Faubourg in Dubai.

Both were tasked with creating a range of recipes that incorporated a variety of colorful sauces using French butter. Chef Maroun created a beetroot hollandaise, a turmeric and citrus butter, a cauliflower puree, and an alcohol-free marchand de vin butter, resulting in bold purple, yellow, green and red sauces, all of which complemented a range of vegetable and fish dishes.

Speaking about the importance of quality butter as an ingredient when making a sauce, Chef Maroun, Top Chef Middle East judge, said: “Butter adds refinement, taste, and texture to the sauce. It elevates the flavours of any dish and adds finesse to the sauce.”

Chef Gilles created a baby vegetable and wasabi butter dish and grilled chicken breast and smoked paprika butter.

He said: “The most important thing about a great sauce is the texture. In other words, what we feel immediately in our mouth, the first impression and feeling we have when combining the two things correctly – that is, flavour and texture. The main purpose of a sauce is to stimulate our sensations with the right texture, and therefore the base has to be well proportioned to the butter and the seasoning.”

The other chefs contributing to the magazine included Chef Nobu Lee, from Orchid restaurant in Taipei, Taiwan. He created a thread fin bream dish with kelp and used French butter and oranges to create a brightly coloured orange curd.

From Shanghai, Chef Wenyuan Zhu, from Borage restaurant developed a vegetarian dish of kapa cabbage and caramelised coffee butter sauce, while Chef May Chow of Happy Paradise in Hong Kong, created a salted lemon and black squid ink butter to accompany her roasted lamb loin, Chinese black olive, lettuce and Chinese lamb jus.

The magazine will be used as a promotional tool in the Middle East to underscore the world-class attributes French butter provides.