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Dieci e Mezzo dinner

If, with your rudimentary Italian, you haven’t worked out that the restaurant name is ten and a half, now you know. If you divide that by three chefs, my rudimentary maths says three and third’ish bit each. (Which isn’t going to turn into anything like a useful rating for the dinner as I hoped, so forget it.)

As we said in the last newsletter , locals who know these chefs  – James Kidman,  Thomas Moore (who has just left Grazing at Gundaroo) and Ben Willis of Aubergine, were playing the ‘match the chef to the dish’ game. Yes, that duck must be Tom’s, remember his duck and pinot dinner? The desert must be Ben’s? We’ll it turned out that the whole five courses were collaborative. Planned apparently over lots of enjoyable lunches and the result was consistently surprising.

We took a few pictures as we always do, so we thought we’d share them here.

Tom Moore and Ben Willis and staff listening to the speeches

James Kidman welcoming us

Sherry McArdle-English talks about training her dog Snuffle to a wrapt audience

The Dieci room was full and buzzing

And that dessert - Amedei Toscano chocolate delice, white chocolate and truffle icecream.

Where to eat truffle!

There are a number of special event dinners you’ll find on the calendar,
but these are the places who will always be able to shave, grate or dice
a local black truffle onto or into your meal. Some of the winery and regional
restaurants are only open from late or mid-week and over the weekend,
so make sure of their opening hours. Please book ahead, and if
you’re after truffle, confirm that they have them available. See our truffle
finder map to see their locations from where you are (or are staying).

Dieci e Mezzo
Chef James Kidman is a dedicated trufflephile and it shows in his seasonal truffle menu.
Corner Bunda and Mort Streets, Canberra City 2601
02 6248 3142 » Website
Open Breakfast Monday to Friday from 7.30am,  Lunch Monday to Friday from 11.00am
Dinner Monday – Saturday from 6.00pm

Grazing at Gundaroo
Chef Kurt Neumann will have truffle dishes during the season.
Cork Street Gundaroo NSW 2620. Booking 02 6236 8777 Website
Open Thu 6pm-10pm; Fri-Sun 11:30am-3pm, 6pm-10pm

Lambert Vineyards Restaurant
Chef Chris Whitlock is planning e two special degustation diners (6,13 August),
but throughout truffle season you can enjoy  trufflepizzas and  truffle additions to
their a la carte dishes.
810 Norton Road, Wamboin NSW 2620. Bookings (02) 6238 3866 » Website

What’s round, buttery and truffled?

Leanne Gray is the master baker at Silo Bakery in Kingston, and here she’s making what has become a much awaited truffle seasonal highlight – truffled butter balls. Leanne was looking for a way to introduce customers who were anxious about using truffles, to a simple way to try them. From the Silo cheese room you’ll be able to buy one or more of these and get advice on suggested uses, (spreading on Silo sourdough toast and covering with scrambled eggs is one). Leanne has perfected this mix of unsalted butter, a hint of garlic, parsley, a few crunchy bits of Murray River salt and Capital Country truffle. The coating is a dusting of a Nomu style edible ‘dirt’.

The balls feature on Silo’s breakfast and lunch menu where you’ll pay a reasonable $6 for the added truffle butter. They’re available from Silo as soon as they get their first good truffles (Leanne made these for our photograph with another bit of the Terra Preta one that James Kidman used – early season but tasty!)
Silo – 36 Giles Street Kingston ACT 2604   Ph (02) 6260 6060

3seeds Cooking Class Booked out

The 3seeds team lead by Catherine and Andrew Haskins will lead you into the world of preparing and using truffle in your own dishes. Then you sit down and eat them accompanied by Mt Majura Wines. The Mt Majura winemakers and the truffle grower will be there to answer questions. Cost $120 for class and lunch, $55 for partners who don’t want to cook. Contact 3seeds to book

They grow them big in Braidwood

It’s not very pretty but at 400+ grams it’s $800 worth of ugliness. The ladies of course are lovely, that’s Sherry McCardle-English and Kate Marshall holding the’ monster’. It’s an early season truffle so not that pungent in smell, and it’s a bit bug eaten, but when Kate and her dog Sal found it both of them were a bit surprised. Not only one of the first of the season but also the biggest so far.

I don’t know if Kate gets bragging rights yet but it certainly means there’s going to be a great season ahead. When they’re so knobbly, it usually means that they’re a few fused together and if you started to cut it, it would break into smaller ones. Ugly smaller ones. Tasty ugly smaller ones.

When is that Festival thingy again?

While we really appreciate the promotion our event gets in the press we’re always anxious when we talk to journalists. Here’s another example when we’re as clear as we can be that the Festival events are happening for the whole month of  July and yet the publication says they’re on a weekend in June! To be fair it does have the right date in the opening sentence but down in the bold type details – it’s fantasy land.

So don’t expect anything on the June weekend mentioned in Canberra Times  ‘In the City’, think July. July. July.

We did like the (I suspect from brew master Richard Watkins) description of what the truffle in his infuser adds to the Wig and Pen Spiced Old Ale. “The malt, spice and cumquat flavours are married together by the truffle creating a nutty malt flavour with spicy richness”. Yum.

Drink up but in July ok?

Truffles and dim sum

When Jeff Piper, chef and co-owner of Anise decided to change from his fine dining/modern oz  menu (which included a great Truffle degustation for our first festival) to a Thai tapas (?) one, we said ‘mmm, how can you add truffles to that?’

Well, it seems that for Chinese dim-sum diners in Singapore that’s easy to answer with a dish such as Din Tai Fung restaurant’s,  Xiao Long Bao with truffle. (more…)

Come back Jim!

Wayne and Lainie Haslam invited us for diner last night to say thanks and farewell to Truffle Festival regular Jim Trappe. Jim and his colleague Andrew Claridge  run a great Festival lecture and field trip to talk about the Australian native truffles. The native truffles are a feature of our native forests and part of the essential soil fungi for most of our Australian trees.

Eating them is left to our native animals and birds who help spread the spores around as they don’t have much attraction as human food both visually and by taste. Jim is heading back to Portland in Oregon, he’s spent winters here in Canberra (and around the country on field trips) with mostly CSIRO funded projects for 14 years. The idea of experiencing a summer in his home state was going to be novel.

We were sharing a lovely meal that Lainie had been preparing obviously for days and asked Jim what wines he drank back home. He loves our local red wines and Oregon has a fine wine reputation but it was the beers he was looking forward to and cited an statistic that there were more brewing companies in Portland (63) than in cities famous for their beer like Cologne.

Jim and Andrew wrote an Scientific American article on truffles, both culinary and wild, here’s a PDF copy of it from on the Truffle Growers Association website.

We will have another Native Truffles session this year, we’re just finalising a date (Jim may be back but Andrew has agreed to lead the hunt and talks) see the event calendar for details.
Update: Lecture is on 25 June. Bookings on our Payments page

Here we go again

It’s been a very wet summer around here. While most people have irrigation on their truffieres, dams have been low after years of drought and the new tree plantings have taken most of the attention and water. Then, while we haven’t had flooding rain as some areas have, it has been enought to send the local winegrowers into a frenzy of spraying to stop rot and mildew in their grapes.
There’s an old world rule of thumb that says

A bad year for grapes is a good year for truffles

So we’re sitting back to see if that’s true. We’ve got tantalising feedback from growers of signs of truffles already, and it’s only April! Does this mean that we’re in for a great season? It usually doesn’t start until we’ve had frosts, so will they all come early?

We decided last year that the truffles were at their best and the supply greatest in July. So that’s when we decided to concentrate our Festival promotion. It looks this year that we could start early and who knows if we’ll still have truffles until we plan to finish in August!

That’s why we love these exotic black treasures, they may be farmed but they’re as variable as any natural produce, dependant on temperature and rainfall.

Website relaunched

This is finally it. We can’t put it off any longer.

There’s some missing bits still but we’ll have it close enough to go today.