Popcorn, butter, Parmigiano, curry

I wasn't even sure this corn would work anymore but in the end there were only a few old maids.

How rude. 

Ever since I read in Harold McGee's book, the cooks bible actually, that popcorn is best heated slowly not quickly as I had been doing and with an open lid not a closed lid as I had been doing, and incorporated those two changes my popcorn has improved immeasurably. It's crunchy now. I'll be giving away that 80's hair-dryer popcorn maker. 

This popcorn is heavy with oil and butter, the seeds cooked coated in oil with a little extra slopping around, oil that can take the eventual high heat. I used olive oil, not the best kind of oil for this but I like it and it works. The seeds stirred around as a machine would while they are heating. A screen is placed over the pot when they start popping. Then, it's on. The pot shaken for the seeds to make their way down and have contact with the pot. Listening for the sound of seeds shaking. The pot turned out as the last pops space too far apart to go any longer without burning. 

Popcorn dumped.

Butter goes into the hot pot and melts and bubbles, lots and lots of glorious butter, this whole effort is all carrier for wonderful butter. 

And other things. 

Whatever you like. The butter will help  it stick. 

When the popcorn is gone and all that remains are the kernels and the unstuck dregs. Lots and lots of glorious dregs. This whole effort is to get at those wonderful rich fatty spiced up intense cheesy butter-soaked dregs.

Not just regular butter, butter from cows. Not just regular cows. Cows that eat grass. Not just regular grass, super green lush happy densely full of chlorophyll grass. Grass in France! Or maybe England or somewhere. I don't know. It's the only butter they had.

What is curry? It is a billion possible combinations of untold number of spices. Every household in India has their own rather complex favorite mixtures. What is in this little bag? Curry.

Cooks use the elements that go into their mixture, not buy the whole mixture pre-mixed like this. That cedes control. The cook will have all the elements already. They bring out their little masala daba, their spice tin, and get to mixing. This sack labeled curry is yellow with turmeric and that would be one spice in the masala daba added to cooking at the end. Not dumped in all at once. And not on popcorn like this. But hey, what the heck. The spices have five seconds to bloom in the hot bubbling butter.