"We started our evening off with iced Clos des Goisses champagne, which Paul served in the big bubbly-glass goblets that we'd bought in Biot, the local glassmaking town. The first course was 'tomates farcies a la pistouille'; tomatoes stuffed with chopped eggplant, fresh tomato pulp, basil, and garlic. A poached egg sat on top, like a queen on her throne." -- Julia Child, "My Life in France"

How many people have taken their first steps towards serious cooking because of Julia Child? How many people have read her words or watched her on their televisions? How many people saw a gawky, awkward woman who never seriously cooked until her forties, looked at the delicious food she had made, and then said to themselves, "Wait -- I could make that?" In a way, the best compliment to Ms. Child is that her contribution to home cookery cannot be quantified. In a culture increasingly fascinated by food, where chefs now regularly enjoy celebrity status, where people write and read blogs like this one, perhaps the real question is this: What part of food culture didn't she contribute to?

Indeed, however many people have been influenced by Ms. Child, as of this week, we can add one more person to their ranks.

(***NOTE FOR FACEBOOK READERS: This post includes extensive use of video, which will not show up in embedded blog posts. Please go to http://burningpasta.blogspot.com/2009/01/kitchen-staple-sweet-cream-butter.html to read it. I'm afraid that this post just won't cut it if you skip the fancy-pants moving pictures.***)

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Butter.

We all use it, we all love it, and it's a key ingredient in any kitchen. Branching over multiple cultures, used for purposes both savory and sweet, whether presented hot and served with lobster, or found as cold bits dotting pastry dough, butter is an invaluable tool for the modern cook.

And yet, all this being said, I don't know one person who makes their own butter. People have this impression that to make it, you need a big wooden contraption, several hours, and your hair up in Dutch pigtails. Pish-posh. (Poppycock!) With prices-per-pound creeping up past four dollars (while the ingredients to make the same amount from scratch remain around two dollars) , now is a good a time as any to learn how to churn your own. And believe me, it really, really, couldn't be any easier.

There are two kinds of people in any given kitchen. There are cooks, and there are bakers.

For those few brave souls who know just how to fold butter into pastry dough, who live for scones and cakes and cookies, dessert is an easy course to tackle, an eagerly anticipated one, even. For the rest of us, making dessert is a nebulous dance with disaster, a tense gauntlet wherein souffles fall, raisins blacken, and the alternative of a cheese board, a few pears, and a solid bottle of port seem like a much better idea.

I have a particularly bad case of baking phobia, and it's exacerbated by yet another heresy -- I don't have a sweet tooth, not in the least. (I know, believe me. The Pasta Burner thinks I'm nuts.) But still, I know what joy baked goods bring to people, so I do my best to make things here and there. For the most part, they're actually pretty decent, but every once in a while, a dessert of mine is an absolute, total flop.

For this reason, it's always good to have a back-up plan, a dessert that's absolutely fail safe, made with ingredients you'll find in almost any pantry. It's quick, delicious, and satisfying. It's Pudim de Leche. It's so easy, I'm going to try and walk you through the recipe with as few words as possible.