Hello fellow foodies
This weekend was an amazing celebration of foodie fabulousness. Not only is Canberra studded with beautiful wineries and smokehouses full of amazing products, it’s also the perfect spot to grow truffles.
Imagine my excitement when arriving on The Truffle Farm on Saturday at 9am to be told that Australian truffles are hitting the world market by storm. Not only are we producing amazing amounts of these black diamonds, but the quality and variety of the truffles we produce have created global excitement. Think New York, Tokyo, London…they are order directly from The Truffle Farm and the demand is exceeding current capabilities.
Jayson, the owner, is doing a fabulous job educating those who pass through his black diamond estate, guarded and worked by a pack of uber-adorable labradors that are in my opinion, some of the happiest dogs I’ve ever met.
Should you pocket a truffle and try and remove it from the very well planned hunt, I reckon the attitudes of the owner and his pack would change quite dramatically. As an ex police dog trainer Jayson stumbled into this line of work through a series of very fortunate events. What a lucky man. To be surrounded by one of the most sought after culinary treats on a daily basis, and to rescue beautiful dogs and groom them into happy money making machines…everyone wins.
Anyone who knows me knows how excited I get about food in general. I could barely contain myself on Saturday. I was one of the lucky guests to dig a massively perfect truffle out of the freezing cold fragrant soil at the base of a oak tree. Willow, the well-trained lab, showed us where this treasure lay just inches below the soil, and then Jayson handed me the truffle spade and under his tuition I managed to unearth a massive gem of a truffle…oh the excitement! Apparently mine was really good quality with zero imperfections, thank you Willow for making me look good on my debut truffle dig.
After the dig we headed back to the cozy warmth of the luxurious tent to indulge in some of the culinary treats that were part of the experience. We started with some amazing truffled brie on lovosh and then ended with a rather luxurious truffled panna cotta (which I will be replicating very soon I promise) as Jayson wanted us to explore the versatility of these gems.
If you ever get the opportunity to head down to The Truffle Farm I would highly, highly, recommend it.
I also managed to bring some home to Vanilla Zulu and Chef Jan and I will be shaving these black babies into a whipped truffle butter to be enjoyed over our signature rosemary black salt focaccia. Apparently if I store my truffles in my eggs, or in my Arborio rice, I’ll get that beautiful fragrance infusing and can enjoy truffled scrambles eggs, or truffled risotto without actually using the truffle. What I also found interesting was that the different trees produce different truffles, one day I’ll know them well enough to sniff the difference.
