Olives in England

/ Gareth

Those who have delved deep into On The Farm may have stumbled on an article on global warming that I wrote for a New Zealand small farm magazine a couple of years ago. I’ve been keeping up with the issue ever since, thanks to excellent resources like RealClimate and Google’s news alerts. I’m certain that global warming is going to be a serious challenge for the world in the not-too-far-distant future, but I lean towards the optimistic end of opinion (ie, we can fix it, if we…). But I’m nowhere near as heroically optimistic as Marco Diacono, an Italian living in Honiton, Devon. As the BBC reports:

“Mr Diacono aims to bring in his first olive oil within the next seven years but just in case, he has planted an olive species used to frost and snow.”

I think they mean an olive cultivar, and I would guess we’re talking the Tuscan trinity — frantoio, leccino and pendolino — all of which are growing nicely at Limestone Hills. Even so, I would guess that there wouldn’t be enough heat (yet) to ripen the fruit — not commercially, at least — for a good many years. But I did note that while staying in Kew before Christmas, olives seemed to have become a trendy front garden tree — and there was even some black fruit to be seen. Time, perhaps, for a special English revision of The Olive Book.

Meanwhile, readers who have been waiting for news of our first olive oil will have to wait another year. Blackbirds ate the lot before I got the bird scarers organised. I am therefore planning autumn feasts with songbirds on the menu. Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie?

The first truffle

/ Gareth

Firsttruffle.jpg
18g. Harvested at 2-25pm on Wednesday, June 14th 2006.

We were on the way out of the truffière. Peg was bored, more interested in sniffing down mouseholes than round trees, keen to get back to her bone. As she passed the last hazel, I decided to stick my trowel into the earth at its base, to see if there was much root mass close to the suckers. The little trench was a couple of inches deep, and I had a sniff of the soil — as one does — and, yes, there was a hint of truffle. Wishful thinking has led me to this point many times. Damp earth is one of the aromas in a truffle’s armoury. I scraped a little more earth, carefully. No mistaking the smell. A real truffle. I dug a little more, and knocked the end off the truffle. A strangled expletive emerged. Peg was unimpressed, off after mice. I dropped the trowel and used my fingers to carefully rip the truffle from the soil. The already beautiful day — blue and cold, snow on the hills — became brighter. It wasn’t fully ripe — still slightly reddish in the skin, and with brown rather than black flesh, but it had a nice scent. It looks like we’re a week or 10 days away from full ripeness — in line with the expectations of other local truffle growers.

First question. What will I do with it? I’ll hang on to it until next week, to use as Exhibit A at a talk I’m giving. Take a few more photographs of it and its tree. Then I’ll eat it. Peg and I will return to truffle hunting after the NZ Truffle Association conference at the end of the month. And she’ll have to stop relying on charm to earn her bones. Nose to ground, dog…

Second question. How many will we have? No idea. It won’t be the only one there, I’m sure. The hazel that produced it is not in any way remarkable, no outstanding brulée, not huge. Friends can look forward to some fine meals.

I had Oeufs aux truffes sans truffes for breakfast today. Good days begin with truffled eggs.

Careful with that spray, Eugene

/ Gareth

My views on truffle oil are probably becoming clear to readers of this blog, and I’m always glad to get support in high places — in this case from Joel Robuchon and Alain Passard in France. They’re upset at the increasing use of flavour additives in classical French cuisine, of which arôme de truffe is just one example. Adam Sage covers the issue at The Times Online:

“It is shameful,” said M Passard, who claims to use only natural ingredients at his celebrated Parisian restaurant, l’Arpège. “I don’t know what to call the people who use these chemicals, but they are not cooks. Cooking is about seasons and nature.”

M Robuchon, widely considered to be one of the most talented chefs of the past 20 years, agreed. He said: “I am 200 per cent against the use of artificial flavours and additives.” However, such flavours appear to be an increasingly common ingredient in French cuisine, with chefs looking for quick, cheap recipes.

Many of the arômes come from Chef Simon, a French restaurant supplier. Their site is an eye opener. This, for instance, is how to make oeufs aux truffes sans truffes sans truffes. “Oeufs aux truffes” are truffled eggs (recipe in my book). “Oeufs aux truffes sans truffes” are truffled eggs without truffles — that is, the eggs are truffled by storage with truffles, and absorb a lot of flavour. You can cook them without truffle and still enjoy a good hit of flavour. “Oeufs aux truffes sans truffes sans truffes” are that dish made without any real truffle at all, by using their arôme. And they claim it’s astonishing. I claim it’s fraud.

They also suggest that it’s OK to use cheap Chinese truffles, with a dose of arôme. If there are restaurateurs who think serving that to their customers is acceptable, they should be shot. But there are plenty prepared to overuse truffle oil… Education is the key. They all need to read my book…

Eat like a monkey

/ Gareth

Since we’re all primates, why not live on the same diet as the monkeys in the zoo? That’s what this chap is doing, but he isn’t munching bananas. He’s eating ZuPreem primate dry animal food, presumably the monkey version of cat biscuits. You can read his weight stats, see videos, and track progress on his blog — which is truly funny.

I am not tempted to emulate him. Not at all. Never.

Kalahari kultivation

/ Gareth

Although Kalahari truffles are not highly valued outside Namibia, there are signs that this might be about to change. AllAfrica.com reports that scientists are looking for funds to research the truffle’s partner plants — which they say is the “wild melon fruit”. Other Terfezia spp have been successfully grown in truffières in Spain, but with a different host — the rock rose, so it will be an interesting project if it gets underway. If they can ship fresh truffles up to the Middle East, they could be on to a nice little earner, but they might be in for a shock if they think they can command the same price as Italian whites…

Truffle oil: too much of a bad thing

/ Gareth

I don’t like truffle oil. Neither does LA Times‘ writer S Irene Virbila:

“I quite possibly would have enjoyed the steak ‘n’ eggs — steak tartare topped with a quail egg — if it hadn’t been so doused with truffle oil that it was like eating raw beef marinated in after-shave.”

I wouldn’t want to be the restaurant she was reviewing — apart from being incredibly expensive and producing uninspiring food, they were using the oil like ketchup:

“Poussin pot-au-feu is baby chicken in its juices with wild mushrooms, fingerling potatoes, fresh corn and other spring vegetables. But hold the truffle oil. In one meal, our group happened to get four dishes with truffle oil. That constitutes abuse.”

I’ve noted before that Ms Virbila knows her truffles, and it’s good to see that we agree about truffle oil too. As anyone who reads my book will discover, all commercially available truffle oils are 100% artificial, even if they have a little slice of something that looks like truffle at the bottom of the bottle. It’s much easier and a lot cheaper to dose some oil with an entirely artificial cocktail of the principal chemical components of truffle smell than it is to take fresh truffle and try and make it give up its goodness to the oil.
Truffle oils are like cartoon versions of the real thing. A fresh truffle produces lots of different flavour and aroma components — the artificial versions use only the commonest chemicals to create a much simplified smell and flavour. A bit like doing a painting by numbers version of a Picasso, and then trying to pass it off as the real thing.

I use truffle oil to train the incredibly charming Peg. If I see it on a menu, I avoid that dish. I have been known to make pointed comments to waiters in posh restaurants. I mean, would they dare serve tinned asparagus?

A tissue of sniffs

/ Gareth

Some of the wilder shores of molecular gastronomy are to be found in a newly-resurgent Japan, according to The Sunday Times. And truffles have a role to play…

“One course consisted of a piece of tissue paper impregnated with the smell of truffles: just the smell — no actual truffles were to be ingested.”

Not much of a role. Cheap dish, though – I expect there’s a bottle of Truffarome on the shelf at the Tapas Molecular Bar.

Bumper season for Kalahari truffles

/ Gareth

Kalahari truffles look like “dessicated donkey dung”, according to Robyn Dixon in the LA Times, but they taste good and there’s a bumper crop this year, thanks to a particularly wet summer in the Kalahari.

“When Dumenikus Freeman, 40, of the Nama tribe was out hunting for truffles last month, he happened upon a haul to remember for a lifetime. In a typical season, he might walk for hours and find a few truffles. But Freeman, his wife and children, hunting in the roadside grass, were plucking out truffles every few seconds. Sitting on the ground beside his donkey cart was a sack with at least 15 pounds of truffles, and it was only midmorning. Heavy rains had robed the Kalahari in luxuriant green this year, instead of the usual red dust, and spawned prodigious amounts of truffles, a bumper season unlike any that people can remember.”

Kalahari truffles are Terfezia pfeilii, a close relative of the desert truffles of North Africa and the Middle East. They lack the strong aroma and flavour of the French and Italian Tuber species, but they are still very good eating, as Dixon explains:

“Namibians are as inventive about Kalahari truffles as others are about the potato. They bake them, boil them, puree them, slice them raw with salt or serve cooked slices in a salad. Some barbecue them or grate them over pasta. Some fry them in lashings of butter and eat them on toast. Some recommend wrapping small ones in bacon and baking them whole. Others whisper their own secret: Cook them, but let them sit a night and eat them the next day, the flavors richer and enhanced. They like to slice truffles into thick disks or chunky cubes, with none of the delicate shavings, thin slices, strips, trimmings and peelings that the French truffle is usually subjected to.”

Another country to add to my world truffle tour.

A working dog once more

/ Gareth

The incredibly charming Peg is being reminded of her chief purpose in life. This is not to wander around the garden annoying the cats, or to consume the butcher’s fine bones, nor yet to sleep on my daughter’s bed, but instead to apply her very fine nose to the task that will soon be at hand — finding truffles. She’s getting regular reminder sessions with truffle baits (35mm film canisters with a little truffle oil on cotton wool inside and holes cut in the lid to let the smell out) buried in the truffiere, and is finding them with her customary ease. In three or four weeks the season will be beginning, and she will find me my first truffle. Or not.

The coming NZ season looks promising. There are reports of good signs of truffle from several established producers, if not yet at Limestone Hills. Meanwhile, the irrepressible Tim Terry in Tasmania tells me he has just harvested his first of the season. By accident. A trainee truffle hound did the business. Not yet fully ripe, though.

The last rat

/ Gareth

Autumn turns to winter, and the courgettes give up the ghost. The big green leaves become covered in white powdery mildew, and the little fruits struggle to ripen to a reasonable size. Some are misshapen, some rot at the end. So I picked the last one, grabbed a couple of the yellow tomatoes and a large ripe Evergreen, plucked the remaining little Japanese aubergines, and made a ratatouille. Not a proper ratatouille, where you fry all the bits separately and then assemble the whole thing at the end, more a vegetable stew. Some garlic in olive oil, fry the sliced courgette until it’s browning, then throw in the aubergines (being little, they need no chopping), and the chunks of tomato. Add as much basil as you can get from the pathetic stalks left in the garden, and stew for 30 minutes. Very nice indeed.

I can strongly recommend costata romanesco, cocozelle and goldrush courgettes. The romanesco plants are incredibly productive, and the baby marrows will turn into adults overnight if you’re not careful. Fantastic flowers, too. The aubergines that work best in my garden are Japanese Long Toms. They don’t get to the 17.5cm length they promise in the book, but they are prolific and tasty. This year’s tomato discovery is Evergreen. Large, tasty and, yes, green. The prize for prolific production goes to the tomatillo. Incredible numbers of fruit from just a couple of plants. Will become a regular in the kitchen garden, I’m sure.