blog from OUR kitchen » Experimenting with Truffle-infused Oil

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Thursday, 24 January 2013

Experimenting with Truffle-infused Oil

Filed under: food & drink,pasta — ejm @ 11:59 EDT

summary: We have wonderful friends; truffle-infused oil is great with mushrooms; sprouts are easy to grow and perfect for garnishing (click on image(s) to see larger views and more photos)

We have the best friends! This is one of the Christmas presents they gave us: La Tourangelle White Truffle Infused Sunflower Oil. It is phenomenally good and the tiniest amount makes ordinary mushrooms taste like truffles. Now we can have “truffle” omelettes whenever we want.

La Tourangelle White Truffle Oil begins with Organic Sunflower oil, which is slowly infused with white truffle aroma following a 150-year-old French tradition. [...] Just like the most prestigious perfumes, the white truffle aroma is very rare, expensive and difficult to source. Only a few companies master the art of producing the aroma. We infuse the aroma in Organic Sunflower Oil because of its great properties and its neutral flavor that won’t interfere with the aroma like olive oil may do.

Shelf life
Unopened: 12-month shelf life
Opened: best used within 6 months

La Tourangelle | Infused White Truffle Oil (latourangelle.com)

It’s not just for omelettes though. It’s also wonderful tossed with fried mushrooms in fresh pasta.

We do eat like kings, don’t we? We served the truffle-oiled fettucine and mushrooms with roast chicken and steamed broccoli. The garnish is sprouts from our “garden“.

This isn’t the first time that we’ve tried truffle infused oil. We used to buy exorbitantly priced tiny bottles of truffle-infused olive oil at a stall in St. Lawrence Market. But it suddenly didn’t feel like good value. The last time we got it, the oil tasted old.

But this Californian oil is brilliant. As per the instructions, we’re keeping it in the fridge. And hoping that we don’t forget to finish it.

Hmmm, maybe we should have “truffle” omelettes for breakfast this weekend. Or perhaps we should try one of these recipes:

In the summer, I discovered a way to make myself feel better that I seem to murder some of the bedding plants that I put into pots. Invariably, by the end of July, they’re bedraggled if not completely dead. So… I composted the dead plants, scattered various seeds over the soil and filled the pots with sprouts.

But, of course, I can’t do that now. Even a master gardener can’t grow things when the temperatures are constantly dipping below freezing.

Suddenly, a lightbulb flashed on in my head! We have a small plant light in the dining room. The light used to be at T’s grandmother’s house and was intended to be used for housing Bonsais. When we got the light, we were also given a number of lovely plants. Alas, I was less than successful with them. (You don’t want to know what beautiful miniature trees – or how quickly – or how many – I managed to murder.)

I switched to growing little houseplants and herbs. Rats. Those didn’t do all that well either. Then not long ago, I suddenly realized that the area was ideal for sprout growing!

Just before Christmas, I planted mustard, onion, nigella, chia, sesame and radish seeds. Of course, they didn’t come up in time to wow our Christmas guests. But some of them did suddenly burst forth a couple of weeks ago. (The sesame and nigella seeds did nothing! The chia seeds have just started sprouting but in quite a spindly fashion.)

The sprouts sprouting are almost making (almost, I said) the bitter cold and snow outside bearable. But. Even though it is only January, I still think it’s high time for spring to be springing.