Brown butter is so relaxing to make. You put the butter in a pan over a gentle heat and patiently wait while it melts. Once it’s melted into a lovely golden pool, turn the heat up to medium-high; it will bubble and spit and sputter, it’s very noisy. Swirl the pan every 30 seconds to a minute, and that will prevent the milk solids from caramelising too quickly. As it quietens to a crackle, the last moisture is leaving the pan. All of a sudden, it goes silent. Then you know the butter is almost ready. The silence is accompanied by a very fine cappuccino foam on top, and the smell is gorgeous: roasted hazelnut, with the slight sour resonance of butter.
Don’t be afraid to take it fairly dark; you don’t want it to go black, you want a rich, deep, golden colour. It’s a perfect example of how cookery isn’t just about sight, taste and smell, it’s also very much about sound. You’ve got the wet bubble, the dry crackle and then silence: it’s ready.
