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truffle

Ingredient Spotlights

Savory Ingredient Spotlight: The Truffle

Savory Tv will always be dedicated to recipes, although our goal is to help you learn about delicious ingredients as well. Savory ingredient spotlights will focus on the origins and history of gourmet foods found in nature, so that you can prepare meals including these ingredients with knowledge and complete confidence.

We are thrilled to honor the delicious truffle in our first ingredient spotlight post.

Known as “the diamond of the kitchen”, the truffle is a highly coveted and sought after gem. They are a subterranean fungi known as a tuber. Because they are difficult to cultivate and are found underground, they are often hunted for with specially trained dogs, and occasionally female pigs. The scent of the truffle has is know to have a compound that is similar to the male pig pheromone’s, hence the female pig attraction. Because pigs tend to eat the truffles, the dogs are a more favored choice.

The highly prized nature of the truffle and labor intensive hunting has driven truffle prices into the sky. The most expensive known truffle sale to date has been the sale of 3.3 lb white truffle found near Pisa in Tuscany, Italy, which sold at auction to a Macau casino owner for $330,000. Another impressive sale involved a 2lb and 10oz Italian white alba truffle, which sold for 95,000 Euros (approximately $140,000) in 2005.

In this video, Australian celebrity chef Benjamin Christie hunts for black truffles with dogs at a truffle farm outside of Camberra, and they find a few diamonds!

Visit Chef Benjamin and watch more of his videos here.

Looking for recipes including truffles or truffle oil? Here are several:

Truffled Egg Toast with Fontina Cheese from Inoteca restaurant in NYC
Truffled Macaroni and Cheese from NYC Chef Patrick Vaccariello
The World’s Most Expensive Grilled Cheese from Gilt Restaurant in the Palace Hotel NYC

Breakfast Recipes

Truffled egg toast for breakfast or brunch!

Chef Marlon Manty of Inoteca in NYC shows you how to make a fabulous breakfast dish, and a customer favorite! In this video, courtesy of Real Meals Tv, he prepares Truffled egg toast with grilled asparagus and fontina cheese.We can’t imagine anything more decadent for breakfast!

For one serving, you will need:
asparagus 3-4 spears
extra virgin olive oil
bread (the chef uses a loaf of Pullman bread)
salt and freshly ground pepper
2 eggs
fontina cheese
white truffle infused olive oil , or simply white truffle oil if you wish to be decadent

Method per the video instructions:

Trim off the rough edge of the asparagus spears, and toss them with olive oil, salt, and pepper.  Saute or grill the asparagus for approximately 5 minutes, and cut into small pieces (a bit larger than an inch).

Cut a thick slice from a loaf of Pullman bread (or your favorite bread) and remove the crust.  Toast the bread in a 350 oven for 3 minutes.  Remove from oven (keep the oven on), and cut a rectangle shaped outline in the slice, do not remove this section.  Press the section down with the handle of the knife to create a trough for the eggs.

Seperate 2 eggs, place the yolks in the trough you created.    Fence this area in with thin slices of fontina cheese.  Place the bread/egg/cheese into the 350 degree oven for a few minutes, until the cheese melts.  The yolks should be runny. Remove from oven.

Place the asparagus pieces on a plate and top with the egg/toast creation.  Drizzle 2 tsp of truffled olive oil (or truffle oil), add salt and ground pepper.