It’s still truffle season in Europe and 60 Minutes have run a story (see below and it’s up on YouTube) that’s sensational enough for prime time but certainly well done and gives us an inside look into one of the biggest truffle dealers and exporters, the Italian Urbani company. It also talks about how the scarcity is leading to theft and a ‘truffle mafia’, and how even Urbani have issues with Chinese truffle adulterated batches from their suppliers. The ‘Bruno’ featured is Chef Clément Bruno whose one-Michelin star restaurant is in Lorgues, a small village about one-hour drive from Nice (or quicker if you come in by helicopter obviously).
It seems that it’s always truffle season in China, or maybe it’s just those bags of frozen ones that travel around all year.
Thanks to all of you who responded to our survey request, we have six winners for the Capital Region wine dozens, and we can only give the others who missed out our thanks.
The winners are Jill Fraser, Wendy and Bill Nagy, Caroline Miller, Anna Rakyvd, Keith Stead and Skye Yuen. We’ll email you all and arrange for delivery of the wine as soon as we can ( we’ll have to run around and pick it up during the week.)
We’ll share the details in our next newsletter, so make sure you sign up for the last one for the season, and you’ll then be the first to know what’s happening next year as well.
Thank you all again.
(That’s a unique to Capital Country stripey wine in the photo – late season white, full fruit, a distinctly linear after taste – or it could be the wallpaper at Grazing restaurant in Gundaroo reflected)
This is where the Truffle Festival slides into the Fireside Festival with only black truffle to hold together the seams. This was our last big dinner and chef Chris Whitlock had assembled seven truffle inspired courses. It was matched by Ruth Lambert with wines from their private collection, some of which, like the wonderfully smoky 2004 Reserve Pinot Noir was from the last case, which made us feel special. The truffles came from Sherry and Gavin McArdle-English, who were there on the night, and as I mentioned in the last blog post, there was a Dream Cuisine truffle macaron to take home. Thanks to Ruth and Steve Lambert for a great ‘last night’. We slid off home to Bungendore with the full moon illuminating the kangaroos, thinking how lucky we are in Capital Country in truffle season.
The feature image on this post is chef Chris Whitlock’s opening dish, a foie gras and black truffle souffle ( which followed after a little tasting cup of mushroom and truffle broth) .
Due to popular demand, we’ve deciced to have just one more. Benchmark will have a
local Black Truffle Degustation dinner this Tuesday. Consisting of 5 courses with
wines $150 per person There are limited seats only. See the menu.
As we mentioned in the last post, that’s it at least for 2011. Christian may have a few truffles left in the fridge, but he chose to just have four truffle degustation dinners on Monday nights in July. And they were good.
That has to be the simplest of combinations but it surpasses many of the more sophisticated truffle dishes I’ve tried this year. I’m moved to share it with you here after tasting it again at Christian Hauberg’s last Pulp-Kitchen Truffle Dinner for the Festival. I was photographing and making some video for the website and because I’d raved about it before, Christian slid a bowl in front of me while I was working. It would have been dreadfully impolite if I’d said ‘No Thanks’. I hasten to add that this was just prepared for me, it was a much prettier version that was plated up for the other diners. You know how it goes, the perfect pool of polenta on a big plate, making a canvas for the fresh shaved black truffles. It was the first course after a small cup of Jerusalem Artichoke and Truffle Soup as a starter. It had all the theatre of shaving truffle at the table, warm white polenta, pale cheese slices and the shower of black truffle flakes. Leaning over the plate, the aroma was released as you broke the truffle flakes into the polenta.
There’s some other photographs of Pulp-Kitchen going up on our Facebook page, and I’ll have the video cut soon and on our Video Page and YouTube. There’s a creamed polenta recipe here. Yes it has cream.
For those of you who haven’t been to the Albion cafe in Braidwood, here it is in a very short clip from a few weeks back. The occasion was a visit by the two James’ – James Kidman and Cassar, to pick up some truffles from Peter and Kate Marshall from Terra Preta Truffles just outside Braidwood.
They were also meeting with Matt Darwon at the Albion to plan the truffle dinner there on the 30 July. There was a 3kg basket of truffles for James to choose from for his Dieci e Mezzo dinner that we wrote about here, and Peter was intent on a scrambled egg breakfast with truffles. And as you’ll see he wasn’t going to let the truffle experience slip away, and kept slicing. The Marshall’s dog Sal, who hunts with Kate had to wait patiently outside. Along with The Albion’s good coffee, inside it was all truffle, egg, truffle, toast and truffle. Pretty good too.
The dinner promises to be great but you’ll need to book now! Here’s the menu.
This was the hunt we did in conjunction with Lark Hill Winery. The Lark Hill restaurant had arranged a specially priced lunch for the hunters on return. Chris Carpenter ably managed a huge group of thirty hunters through their morning coffees, most sat on the great balcony at Lark Hill overlooking the vineyard, just as the mist lifted. It let in some weak sunshine which made everyone feel cheery since the forecast had been for rain. It’s not a lot of fun hunting truffles in the rain.
The Turalla Truffles truffiere (say that three times fast) is on the flat just down the hill from Lark Hill, but we had some anxious moments as the big Stevens bus squeezed under overhanging trees and through cattle grids. Damian Robinson then lead us across the paddocks in his ute to the truffles. We’ve had the ABC Landline team in the region covering the local truffle industry and our Festival story, and reporter Sean Murphy and the camera crew were waiting for us. As you’ll see from the video, Damian was helped by Denzil Sturgiss from Tarago whose truffiere features in a previous blog entry. The Robinson family all helped as well, the girls serving up home made truffled ice cream and Lindsay pouring shots of vodka, infused with some truffle pieces. Damian had only prepared that the day before, but it already had a lovely mellow flavour, and distinctly truffle. Apparently it just gets stronger the longer you leave it. Denzil’s thank you from the Robinsons was a tub of the ice cream, his favourite way to use truffles he says. The vodka might be heading for second place I reckon.
The video, as usual, tells it all. Watch it in HD if you’ve got the speedy connection.
We had a great lunch at our first Truffles in the pub event (see the previous entry). But this last one was unfortunately nowhere near well enough attended which was embarrassing. Our hunt was the secret one and we’d only had a week to organise it, and many of the hunters were heading of to the Le Tres Bon cooking class. The advertising failed to attract a siege of truffle hungry Bungendorians.
Well they missed a treat. Chef Dan Studdert who did the first years of his apprenticeship with Chas, was in charge of the meal (that’s Dan at left). I’ll run through Dan’s menu just to give you an idea of how well planned, simpler truffle dishes can tick all the boxes.
For Entree there was Cauliflower soup with pecorino cheese and grated black truffle. The warmth of the soup sets off the truffle aroma as you spoon up the soup. The shaved truffles float attractively on the surface.
Main courses were either
Rump steak with Garlic and Truffle Butter over a Potato Pie or ‘Chicken in half mourning’ over Rosemary and Thyme Polenta.
The steak was a perfectly cooked medium rare trimmed rump, cut into thick slices. The Garlic and Truffle butter was an intense hit of both, the truffle winning slightly. The little individual potato pie was really special, crisp crust, moist interior. It looked great.
‘Half mourning chicken’ I can hear you ask? That’s the dish that Dan is holding and below. Truffle slices inserted under the skin of the chicken give it the blackness to suggest a funeral, death, whatever. It works to contain the truffle flavours in the chicken. The dish, Dan explained, is a turn of the century (1900) French dish from a famous Parisian woman chef. It is called Poulet demi deuil. See our Facebook page for some more details and links.
The wines came from Little Bridge Wines and were introduced by Roland Clark, who was pouring their 2008 Sangiovese, 2009 Pinot Noir and 2008 Shiraz.
Adding smaller wineries to these lunches just made it even more special. Thanks again to the Lake George team.
This is a bit of catchup, to get all these truffle bits off my chest (out of my teeth?). It starts with last weekend’s hunts, no, with the SMH Growers Market where our team from the Canberra Farmers market Keith and Allana joined up with the mob from Oberon and sold something like three kilo of truffles. Marion Grassby (does only failing on MasterChef give real street cred?) cooked with the stall’s truffles and said she loved their aroma and flavour, the best she’d tried. We had to agree. While that was going on on stage, this happy team was looking after the stall.
L to R – Jane Austen, Jen Roberts, Katie Graham, Louisa Roberts, Sue Roberts from Lowes Mount Truffiere in Oberon
They’ll be there again at the next SMH Market on Saturday August 6. That will probably be the last of the truffles at the markets, so don’t miss out Sydneysiders!
And I grabbed some still images from the (unfinished, but peddling as fast as I can) video of the hunt at Gap Hills to show you how Anne and Denzil had gone to the trouble to set up a big tent to protect us from the wind and a place to sell their truffles, and some value-added bits (a great bargain of 6 truffled eggs with a 30g piece of truffle in a cliptop glass jar). Because we had three dogs and handlers, we broke up into small groups, and if you were happy to get down and dirty, even lift out some of the truffles we found. And we found lots.
Then it was back to the Lake George Hotel for a Truffles in the Pub lunch by Chef Chas Ruffles, with a talk from Denzil and some great local wine from Domaine Rogha Crois matched to the dishes and poured liberally by owners and winemakers David and Lyn Crossley.
Entree was either…
Cauliflower soup with pecorino cheese and grated black truffle or Duck and Cress salad with candied tomatoes and red wine glaze.
Main courses were…
Maryland of chicken over a truffle risotto or Lamb casserole with truffle whipped mash potatoes.
All were very well handled attractive dishes and enough truffle to taste even if you were a developing truffle novice. One of the diners told me he was heading home to immediately make a truffled potato mash with the piece of truffle he’d bought after the hunt. (That’s the kind of inspiration we hope for.)
David had a generous ‘lucky door prize’ of a three pack of the wines we had, their Slink Mink Rose, 2007 Pinot Noir, and 2010 Conti’s Tower – a cabernet franc and merlot blend. They were available for sale as well, and the Pinot Noir was very popular.
Thanks to the Lake George team for making it all happen.
