“This magical, wintry time of year brings with it the Canberra region’s highly prized quality French Black Truffles and marks the start of truffle season in one of Australia’s key truffle growing areas,” said Festival Director and self-confessed truffle groupie, Fred Harden.

“Some of the Canberra region’s best foodie venues including restaurants, wineries, bars, cafes, food markets and truffieres are on board this year to bring you the most amazing truffle-filled events,” he continued.

The festival will include activities such as the popular truffle hunts, master classes and cooking demonstrations led by esteemed chefs, truffle inspired menus and tasting sessions at some of the region’s best venues and educational truffle growing experiences and talks on Australian native truffles.

“We look forward to working with some of the region’s best producers and venues to host a winter-inspired truffle-packed festival this year and welcome all visitors to the Canberra region to experience it for themselves,” Fred concluded.

For more information visit www.trufflefestival.com.au

EVENT INFORMATION FOR YOUR DIARY/CALENDAR AND EVENTS PAGES:

What: Canberra & Capital Region Truffle Festival

Where: Various Canberra region venues including restaurants, wineries, bars, cafes, food markets and truffieres

When: 21 June– 31 July 2012

Cost: Various depending on events

Web: www.trufflefestival.com.au

Images: See the For the Media

For more media information, media images or to arrange a media interview please contact Fleur Charlton, Threesides, 02-6247 1117 or fleur.charlton @ threesides.com.au

MEDIA BACKGROUNDER

What?

The Canberra & Capital Region Truffle Festival 2012

When?
Thursday 21 June (Winter Solstice) – Tuesday 31 July 2012. The festival is timed to coincide with the truffle growing season (mid-June to early / mid-August)

Where?
Various venues in Canberra and the surrounding region including restaurants, wineries, bars, cafes, truffieres and markets.

Why?
Canberra and the region boasts the production of high quality fresh French Black Truffles. The unique nature of truffles and the growing interest in the truffle season has led to the formation of a range of events and experiences that showcase the Canberra region as one of Australia’s key truffle growing areas.

Festival highlights:

• Truffle hunts – see first-hand how truffles are produced and harvested.
• Master classes and cooking demonstrations led by esteemed chefs that show how to use truffles.
• Truffle tasting sessions
• Truffle inspired menus at the region’s finest restaurants, winery cellar doors and cafes.
• Learn about our Australian native truffles.

About the truffles
The Canberra region is known for producing high quality fresh French Black Truffles.

The number of truffle growers in the region continues to grow. Most growers are on smaller ‘truffieres’ (French for a truffle farm) with recently planted truffle infected oak or hazel nut trees.

It is expected that the local industry, with growers from Robertson in the Southern Highlands to Jindabyne in the snow fields, will produce in excess of 100 kilograms of truffles this year, depending on the season.

Truffieres involved in the festival:

• Blue Frog Truffles; Sutton
• Tarago Truffles; Tarago
• Turalla Truffles; Bungendore
• Terra Preta; Braidwood
• French Black Truffles; Canberra
• Bonnes Truffe; Canyonleigh
• Limestone Farm; Bredbo

History/about the organisers
Running since 2009 the festival, originally known as The Capital Country Truffle Festival, was developed by truffle grower Wayne Haslam and self-confessed ‘truffle groupie’, Fred Harden, as a forum to promote the Canberra region as a premium truffle growing area.

Wayne and Fred felt the region needed an event that educated not only the consumers about the unique attributes of truffles but also those in the food service industry about how to use them, as many chefs and cafe owners often have little experience in using truffles and can be nervous about buying and handling such an expensive ingredient. The Capital Country Truffle Festival was born to share this knowledge around.

Since 2009 the Festival has been gaining momentum, with more growers coming on board as their trees come into production and new restaurants adding truffle inspired dishes to their menu.

Visiting Canberra
For more information on Canberra or to book your stay during the Canberra and Capital Region Truffle Festival, go to www.visitcanberra.com.au or call 1300 554 114.

One of the things we know is that the ancient Greeks and Romans talked about eating truffles and that they were found in North Africa centuries ago. One of the random quotes that run in our web sidebar says “Truffles are (a kind of) ‘Manna’ which Allah (God), the Exalted the Majestic, sent to the people of Israel through [Moses], and its juice is a medicine for the eyes” a quote from Hadith / Sahih Muslim, Book 23, Chapter 27. We know first hand about a few of the European truffles, the black, white, winter and summer ones and what they look like, and we’ve learnt from Andrew Claridge and Jim Trappe and about thousands of native Australian truffles (and how tasteless they apparently are unless you’re a potaroo or bandicoot).

So it was with a certain amount of delight that I found this link to a story about Kuwaiti truffles which came through my regular Google keyword search (“truffles – chocolate”). Kuwaiti Times staff writer, Hazel Elizabeth Camper explains their seasonality (late winter after rain), the fact that they are also in short supply as truffles have been in Europe for the last few years. She quotes prices of around A$33 dollars a kilo and one dealer selling 10 tons a day. They look a little like supersized white truffles (Tuber magnatum) some are ‘melon sized’. The only clue to texture is that she says “They are soaked in water for half an hour to an hour, and then peeled in the same way you would scrape a new potato.” Their culinary attraction seems just as strong as our regular black truffles.

There’s lots more, have a look at Hazel’s article and her photo of the huge Egyptian truffles. Great!

“The most important event in the agro-food exhibition in Umbria Norcia, which makes the prima donna of the last two weekends of February, invites everyone to immerse themselves in his fascinating exploration of the landscape and delicious taste.

I think I know what they mean, the Amercan(?) language version of the NeroNorcia truffle festival site looks like it has gone through Google Translate (bless its pointed little head), but it sure made me want to be in Norcia on the last two weekend in February. Have a look.

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.

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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

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.

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)

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) .

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).

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.