Capital Country Truffle Festival

Could it happen here?

admin — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 22:35:11 +0000

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.

While we’re waiting for 2012 season

Fred — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 22:59:06 +0000

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The caption to this image says "This man, who would not give his name, is a reseller. He collects truffles from those who take them from the ground and sells them at a mushroom market of Nanhua county. Truffles are not yet mature in October." [Photo by Yang Wanli/China Daily

We keep an eye on the world truffle news and as the Northern half of the world moves towards harvest, the news alerts are turning up some interesting stories. We thought you might like to follow up on these. We have a ban on on the importation of Chinese truffles here but this story from the China Daily gives some insight into the Chinese industry.

And as the local growers are looking to Asian markets, this item from the Hong Kong Standard gives some idea of the prices you’d expect as a diner there. There’s white truffle arriving there of course.

There’s a gushy piece from the UK Telegraph about hunting white truffles in Marche region of Italy. (They found only 15g that day) but prices have lifted to EURO 2,500 -3,000 a kg. on generally small quantities.

There’s a new Truffle Cookbook from Patricia Wells who runs a cooking school in Italy that we thought sounded great when we read about it last year in US Gourmet’s iPad version.

You can always join in the discussion about how likely you are to try a $100 Truffle burger when you’re in NY or maybe a $60 white truffle-topped pizza (or $40 for black truffle pizza). Of course with the current high exchange rate of the AUS $ , they’re positively a bargain(?). It’s a symptom of the financial troubles where the high end restaurants are finding it hard, and many diners are heading for comfort food. But it makes our local prices look most attractive. You might not have seen this video of Lambert’s truffle pizza.

And the winners are…

admin — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 00:13:58 +0000

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)

Lambert Vineyards Truffle Dinner

admin — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 22:50:01 +0000

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) .

Survey Prize Draw delayed

Fred — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 00:40:35 +0000

We didn’t have all the survey entries last night at the last Lambert Vineyards Truffle Dinner, so to be scrupulously fair, we’ll do the draw on Tuesday 16. There were forms from Locanda’s dinner to include. This gives those of you who haven’t entered to win our regional wine packs, the chance to still add your contribution and go into the draw.

We’ll have some video of chef Chris Whitlock’s truffle dinner, edited and online later today, but I”ll leave you with this image of the ‘going home’ gift that Ruth Lambert and the restaurant team gave us. Two beautiful truffle Macarons. They were made for Chris by Dream Cuisine – Owen Saddler, and his mum Marilyn Chalkley who sell their patisserie produce at the Canberra Farmers Market. Yep that’s gold leaf on top. And they tasted special, nicely truffled (I ate mine when I came home with a late night coffee, Jan -my wife- was groaning from the meal and has kept her’s safe from me – somewhere. Damn).

Benchmark Wine Bar Degustation- Last chance

admin — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 02:49:11 +0000

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.

Pulp-Kitchen bids farewell to truffles

admin — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 05:06:26 +0000

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.

Creamed polenta, aged pecorino, fresh truffle

admin — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 05:48:55 +0000

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.

Meanwhile, down at The Albion

admin — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 11:54:14 +0000

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.

Anyone for truffled ice cream? Maybe truffled vodka?

admin — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 13:08:57 +0000

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.