I‘m being interviewed by Kim Hill — New Zealand’s finest radio host — on her Saturday morning show on National Radio this week. Unless the schedule changes at the last minute, I’m due on at about 11-20am, after the regular food spot. You can listen to a live stream from the RNZ site (go to one of the links above and click on the Audio box in the top left of the page header), and the interview should be hosted on the RNZ site for four weeks afterwards. I’ll post a link when I have one.
Truffles & Farm
Tinderbox does home calls
Mark Bernstein called in on the farm on Monday night. We ate, drank, and talked. A lot of each. And if I am to believe the message he and Linda left in our cottage visitors book, they enjoyed themselves enough to come back. We’re looking forward to it.
Give me your money
After much huffing and puffing, the new Limestone Hills web site is live, and quite probably kicking. It’s built with Freeway Pro, and uses some “actions” (a kind of plug-in that add functionality in the Freeway universe) to hook up to Mal’s e-commerce (free, and highly recommended by Freeway people). It looks as I think it should when viewed with Safari (the Mac OS browser), but is now reasonable in most browsers on most platforms that I’ve tried (which is not all that many).
So what’s new? Well, I think it looks a lot better – new header, new layout and organisation, and buttons to press and videos to view. And I can now accept credit card purchases of the book. Will anyone buy it? I need a few sales a month just to cover the bank charges…
New editions of The Truffle Book now available
Limestone Hills Publishing is pleased to announce the new limited edition hardback version of The Truffle Book, and for those who like to read on-screen, the brand new PDF edition. The hardback edition is strictly limited to 150 copies, reasonably priced at NZ$69.95, each hand-numbered and signed by the author. The PDF edition is priced at $NZ15 (roughly US$10, GB£5.70, E8.20) and I’ll sell as many as people want, but PDF purchasers who want the full book experience (more bandwidth, fully portable, no batteries required) will be able to buy either paper-based edition with a NZ$10 discount.
I’m now toying with ideas for the audiobook version. I need a cheap studio in Christchurch to record the basic audio tracks, and then I can do all the editing in Garageband. Anyone fancy a truffle podcast?
Use more truffle: LA Times gets it right
I usually whinge about mainstream journalists getting truffles “wrong”, but here’s a chance to applaud someone for getting it right. S Irene Virbila in the LA Times has certainly done her research:
“Just for the record, though, when French three-star chef Paul Bocuse makes his scrambled eggs with truffle, he uses an astonishing 7 ounces of truffle for eight eggs, or just about one of the truffles we received for each egg! No butter for the maestro either, as he tells it in his 1992 cookbook, “Regional French Cooking” — just a mere dollop of crème fraîche. And once he whisks the eggs with the truffles, he leaves the bowl to sit for an hour to further infuse the eggs with the taste of truffles before he cooks them.”
Her point is that it makes sense to use truffles generously, to get a real hit of the flavour, not to try and stretch them to the point that they are all but undetectable. It’s a good point, well made.
Another good article on the truffle business appeared in the New York Times (registration required) recently. The author even manages to sneak in a quote from me (she was at the dinner in Barcelona I blogged before Christmas). The person most pleased, however, is Ian Hall. The NYT used one of his pictures. Fame and photographic fortune beckons. Or not.
A strange thing to do with a chicken
There is a traditional French truffled chicken dish called Poularde en demi-deuil, or chicken in half-mourning, in which a chicken has slices of black truffle inserted under its skin. You then leave the chicken for a few hours to infuse with the truffle flavour, and then poach it in a stock. When it comes out, the black slices shine through the white skin. There is a picture of a chicken roasted in half mourning in The Truffle Book…
In the Spanish Pyrenees, however, a few hours infusing is not enough. This thread on eGullet (wonderful name!) describes — with graphic and sometimes beautiful pictures — the preparation of a traditional Christmas dish. Chickens are stuffed (with foie gras, milk, breadcrumbs and black truffle) then wrapped in linen and buried in the ground for up to two weeks. The precise time depends on how cold the ground is — at that time of year it’s close to freezing, which it would have to be to stop the chickens rotting. When nicely done, the chickens are slow roasted, and almost certainly delicious. I’d like to conduct some confirming research, of course… [Link via Boing Boing]
The first porcini of summer
One of the good things about taking the amazingly charming Peg for a lunchtime walk, apart from the exercise, is that we walk various routes through Hagley Park – the park at the centre of Christchurch. And today we found the first porcini (Boletus edulis) of the year.
They were smaller than I normally like to pick, but this was one of the best known porcini spots in the park, and if I didn’t get them they’d either be picked by another fungophile or booted into bits by some philistine. I fancy a little salad of raw porcini as a starter tonight: thinly slice the mushrooms, scrape thin wafers of the best parmesan (reggiano, of course), a little pepper, and mix carefully with some good olive oil from Waipara.
Truffle Book on MSNBC
The Truffle Book was always intended to have an international audience. It’s about the world of truffles and the truffles of the world, so I was particularly please when Jon Bonné, lifestyle editor on MSNBC, referenced the book as a source in a piece about aphrodisiacs, cunningly timed for Valentine’s Day. Jon’s blog, Amuse-bouche is also well worth a visit — full of interesting bits and pieces, or as he calls them, lagniappes…
I never read reviews #1
The proverbial ass (a truffle ass, near Ollogoyen in Spain). Never believe a writer who says he never reads his reviews. We all do. If they’re good, it’s vanity – if they’re bad, it’s a pain in the proverbial ass.
Shortly before I headed off to Europe I bagged up a stack of copies of The Truffle Book and sent them off to the book reviewers of New Zealand. Now the reviews are beginning to trickle in. The Nelson Mail did a very nice write-up (see below), and I’ve just had a clipping of Charmian Smith’s review in the Otago Daily Times. She describes it as “very readable” and “an excellent introduction to the fungus for those who are thinking of growing them, and those who just like to know about highly prized ingredients”. Thanks, Charmian. I wonder when the first bad review will arrive?
Orca again
It seems “our” orca are still hanging around in Tasman Bay. From the Nelson Mail today:
“A pod of orca has turned on a special welcome for walkers heading into Abel Tasman National Park, and for sightseers at Mapua. “
They like eating stingray, apparently, and there are lots in the bay. NZ orca are the only ones in the world known to fancy a snack of ray. I hope they’re still around when I get back to the Abel Tasman in late February. I should be able to see stingrays, but the orca will almost certainly have moved on.