Matteo Girard Maxon owns Ancient Organics, a local food business that specializes in making ghee, a saturated fat heralded for its culinary, health, and healing properties in Ayurvedic medicine, a traditional, holistic practice. Ghee is what you make when you take butter, boil away the moisture, and separate the milk solids. Revered in Indian cooking it is considered a richer, nuttier tasting version of clarified butter.

And, while it has been popular for some time among natural health types and yoga aficionados, ghee is gaining a reputation as a go-to cooking oil among serious food lovers too.

Maxon makes most of the company’s ghee himself, using organic sweet butter from Straus Family Creamery, and the company recently built out its own kitchen in West Berkeley to meet growing demand for its ghee.

Ancient Organics Ghee is sold online (a 16-oz. jar retails for $18.75, a 32-oz. jar costs $32.50 — such prices put this product in the high-end gourmet goods category), at Marin Farmers’ Markets (where 6-oz. jars of spiced ghees sell for $10) and in Bay Area health food stores, including Berkeley Bowl, Whole Foods, and Yoga Mandala. … Continue reading »