What would you do with black winter truffles?

I read recently that truffle oil really isn't.

Anyway, I've never had the good fortune to have truffles to cook with, but I'm sure there are good recipes out there. I'll look around, but probably not tonight.

I've always thought truffle oil was sham, but it's not bad on omelettes.

I just found a website that suggested eating a whole truffle on it's own after steaming it in white wine for about 20 minutes. The most popular suggestion seems to be with eggs.

Domani, but meantime, guard them with vigor.

Are they fresh, dried, pickled? I've seen them stored, if dry, in rice. These can be shaved into risotto, onto salads, in omelettes. Steamed in wine sounds good, but these buggers have a very strong earthy taste. I'd be a little scared try them that way. Oh! How about shaved into butter and olive oil and tossed with pasta?

They are in a glass jar with a small amount of water and/or preserving liquid and sealed with an odd sort of metal lid, sort of hammered on. I was leaning towards an omelette or pasta. Since I've never tasted really ones, it's hard to know exactly what to pair them with. I will probably have to open the jar and do a little taste test. I wonder how long they last after the jar is open?

OK, here's a bank breaking recipe from Craig Claiborne's International Cook Book.

With any luck, my computer won't crash while I'm typing...

Beef Perigourdine

1 filet of beef (4 pounds)
1/4 cup butter
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1/4 cup Madeira
1/4 cup Cognac
3 cups brown sauce or two cans brown beef gravy (brown sauce recipe on some other page)
3 black truffles, finely chopped
2 tablespoons unflavored gelatin
1 1/2 cups Clear Aspic, cool but not firm (recipe on another page)

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
2. Tie the fillet of beef with string. Melt the butter in a roasting pan and roll the fillet in it until well coated on all sides.
3. Sprinkle the fillet on all sides with salt and pepper. Bake 15 minutes, basting occasionally. Reduce heat to 375 and bake one to two minutes longer. It is best rare, but if you wish it more well done, continue cookin and use your judgement.
4. Transfer the meat from the pan. Let cool, then refrigerate.
4. Place the roasting pan on the stove and add the wine and Cognac. Ignite the spirits and let burn until the flame dies. Stir in the brown sauce and truffles. Stir in the gelatin and blend well.
6. Spoon the sauce from the roasting pan into a skillet or large saucepan and bring to a boil. Siimmer three minutes, skimming the surface to remove the scum and foam as necessary. Spoon the sauce over the bottom of an oval serving dish and chill.
7. Slice the fillet of beef and arrange the slices over the sauce so they overlap symmetrically. Then chill the platter once more.
8. Brush the meat with the cool, liquid aspic and apply two of three coasts of the aspic, chilling the meat after each application. If the aspic starts to set, reheat it getnly. If kept properly chilled, this dish can be made several hours in advance. Serve as a first course.

He adds a bit later that the liquid in which truffles are packed should not be discarded because it has truffle flavor and may be used in sauces.

Leftover truffles may be kept in the refrigerator - transfer to a glass jar and cover them with cognac, sherry, port of madeira, Seal with a cap and leave until ready to use. (several weeks ok). They may also be frozen.

Some of this was paraphrased by osso.


If anyone wants the brown sauce or aspic recipes, I'll copy them.

Lamb Noisettes with Truffles and Lyonnaise Potatoes,
from my copy of The Cuisine of Fredy Girardet

To serve 4 -

1 small bunch parsley
3 ounces fresh truffles
1 pound potatoes
1 small onion
1 egg yolk
salt and papper
eight one inch thick lamb noisettes, cut from the loin section of the saddle
3 tablespoons peanut oil
4 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup of veal glaze

Preparation

Mince enough parsley to make 1/2 cup. Mince the truffles. Mix the parsley with 3/4 of the truffles. Peel the potatoes and cut them into slices about 1/8" thinck. Cut the onion into thin slices and separate into rings. In a small bowl, mix the egg yolk with 1 teaspoob water as for a pastry glaze.

Finishing

Salt and pepper the lamb and then use a pastry brush to coat eaach piece with the egg glaze. Roll the lamb pieces in the parsley and truffle mixture, pressing firmly so that the mixture sticks to the noisettes. The Lyonnaise potatoes and the lamb should be cooked as nearly simultaneously as possible. You will need two frying pans, one of them a non-stick pan.

For the lamb, heat 1 tablespoon of the oil over high heat in the non stick pan and add the noisettes. Let them cook 3 minutes, turning once. Add the butter and tlet the meat cook, off the heat, for two more minutes.

Meanwhile, start the potatoes by heating the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil in a frying pan until very hot. Add the potatoes and cook them 5 minutes in all. Turn them often and add the onion rings to the pan after 2 minutes.

Remove the noisettes from their pan. Add the remaining minced truffles and the veal glaze to the pan, bring the sauce to a boil, and season wih salt and pepper.

Presentation

Arrange the Lyonnaise potatoes in the centers of four plates and put the noisetts on top of them. Pour a band of sauce around the potatoes.




Note from osso - his veal glaze recipe is reduced veal stock. I trust one could use reduced beef stock.

Next up -

Also from The Cuisine of Fredy Girardet -

Puff Pastry with Asparagus and Fresh Truffles

To serve 6 as a warm first course -

3 eggs
30 asparagus spears
4 ounces of fresh truffles
1 shallot
4 tablespoons of butter
salt and pepper
1 3/4 pounds puff pastry (he does his from scratch....)
2 egg yolks
1 1/2 tablespoons each madeira and port
3 tablespoons truffle juice
1 teaspoon meat juice, optional

Preparations

Hardboil the eggs and slice into rounds. Cut the ends from the asparagus spears so that the tips are about 3 inches long and cook the tips in salted boiling water for about 2 minutes. Remove while they are still quite firm and drain them.

Slice the truffles into rounds 1/8 inch thick. Chop the shallot and put it in a non-stick frying pan with 1 tablespoon of the butter. Heat until the butter melts and then alld the truffle rounds. Salt and pepper them and saute for 2 minutes over high heat. Remove the pan from the heat and set the truffles aside to cool in the pan.

On a lightly floured work surface, roll out a long putt pastry strip 8" wide and 2 inches long. Cut it in two lengthwise to make one 8 x 12 1/2 " rectangle and one 8 x 13 1/2" rectangle. With a fork, prick the pastry thoroughly, every 1/2 inch or so. If you are not gong to bake the pastry immediately, put it back in the regrigerato to wait, protected with plastic wrap.
(Osso adds - I am a dumpkopf about puff pastry, so I don't know how this works with the packaged pastry).

Cooking

Heat the oven to 425 F. Place the shorter rectangle of pastry on a baking sheet. Arrange 15 or the asparagus spears oin on e layer down the middle of the pastry, tips all pointing the same way, leaving a wide border on all four sides. Salt and pepper the asparagus. Now put a layer of hardboiled egg slices on top of the asparagus and salt lightly. Set aside a scant quarter of the truffles for the sauce and put the rest on the eggs, making sure that you don't brush the truffles against the pastry edges since this will keep them from sealing.
Save the pan with the truffle cooking liquid. Put another layer of asparagus spears, tips facing the opposite direction, on the truffles. Salt and pepper lightly.

Prepare a glze by whisking the 2 egg yolks with a pinch of salt. Use a pastry brush to glasze the borders of the puff pastry. Top with the remaining piece of pastry and use your hands to shape and equalize the filling and then to press the puff pastry sheets together all around the edges. Trim the edges with a knife so that the pastry border is about an inch wide all around the filling and then cut the corners off on the diagonal. Dip the tip end of a spoon handle in flour and use it to score the puff pastry with decorative semicircles and to seal it, prssing the handle down into the pastry edge at 1/8 inch intervals. You must push down on the spoon firmly and also push back into the pastry just a little to make a good seal.

Decorate the surface of the puff pastry by tracing shallow, parallel diagonal lines over the top with the point of a sharp knife. Brush the surface of the pastry with the glaze.. Bake it in the preheated oven for 35 minutes. Watch to make sure it does not burn. When the puff pastry is done, transfer carefully to a platter.

Now chop the truffle slices set aside earlier. Put the pan with the cooking juices from the truffles back on the stove. Wehn reheated, deglaze with the port and madeira mixture and boil to reduce by half. Now add the truffle juice, and if using, the meat juice. Put the chopped truffles in the pan and finsh the sauce by swirlin gin the remaining 3 tablespoons of butter.

Presentation

Take the puff pastry and the sauce, in a sauceboat, to the table, Cut the puff pastry in slices and serve with a little of the sauce.

Comment

Perfume the eggs in their shells by putting them the day before in a tightly covered jar with the fresh truffles. This is well worth doing.

Note - Morels made a good substitute for truffles in this recipe. Use 3/4 to 1 cup fresh or 1/2 once dried, first soaked in warm water for at least a half an hour.

You may substitute additional meat juice, stock, or even asparagus cooking liquid for the truffle juice. If you used dried morels instead of truffles, use the straied soaking wataer instead of the truffle juice.






Editing to try to fix some typos, and to say, about the Lyonnaise potatoes, he describes them in another recipe as "new potatoes", which are what I was surmising anyway.

OK, that's enough typing for now.

Not all of the recipes in the Girardet book are so out of my skill & ingredient league - the book's a treasure.

Oh, the cherry souffle looks easy and delicous, for example....

I checked a2k amazon and didn't find it; checked the book on google and found it on amazon. Who knows?

Here's that link -
http://www.amazon.com/Cuisine-Fredy-Girardet/dp/0688039502



Some more recipe titles - that even I could do...

Berry cocktail with cassis - that involves gooseberries and currants
Trout gratin with tarragon (there is another not gratin trout recipe that looks good too...)
Red Wine fish stew with sole and leeks
Green cabbage (involves the word bacon)


(hah, some hilarious typos, oh, well...)

yikes, black truffles $125 per ounce
white truffles $300 per ounce

Thanks Osso, but those are a little too Cordon Bleu for me, plus Mr. Witch don't eat no meat. I'm more likely to have dandelion wine in the basement than Cognac or Madeira. I did the cooking school thing and learned a lot, but I tend to keep it simple and local.

I'm thinking homemade egg pasta with butter/olive oil and some fresh herbs, maybe a few walnuts or pine nuts thrown in for texture.

Yes, Dys - that's why I want to get it right the first time.

You can overdo this stuff. If the food tastes like mud, then you gotta cut back a bit. You want anything to benefit from the earthy taste, not overpower the food. Ive had a Steak au poivre with a few very thin slices of black truffle in a tarragon and onion reduction as the sauce,.

Yes, I do simple too, just wanted to add variety to the thread.

Me, I'd do a pasta, just about as you say, Green Witch, some simple egg thing, and a good steak dish, as farmer says, and probably have plenty of truffle left over.

I might not mind the pastry and asparagus recipe, except I'm hard boiled egg phobic, so I'd not use those, although I might consider scrambled eggs in that instead.

what..... exactly IS a truffle?

A mushroom of some kind?

People put truffle bits in ravioli too, or I think they do. Maybe it's just more "truffle oil".

Yes, very fancy fungi. They grow under the ground near specific trees and pigs and dogs are used to literally sniff them out. They look like little turds. I always wondered who agreed to eat the first one ("Go on Jacque, I double dare you.").

(the homemade pasta will probably be the winner for at least one truffle)

As anyone knows, who is trained in the social nuances of the sequential ascendancy of responses in "I dare ya", the requisite action is only consumated when the "triple dog dare" is invoked.

I've only skimmed, forgive me if I repeat Osso or someone else.

Think of herbs that go with mushrooms in general. I can see chipotle - smoky chili peppers. I would guess that sage would mix well. Rosemary.

The flavor isn't so much mud as sweat sock.