ordering at a new restaurant

jerry

Well Known Member
From retiring NYTIMES food critic

Scratch off the appetizers and entrees that are most like dishes you’ve seen in many other restaurants, because they represent this one at its most dutiful, conservative and profit-minded. The chef’s heart isn’t in them.
Scratch off the dishes that look the most aggressively fanciful. The chef’s vanity — possibly too much of it — spawned these.
Then scratch off anything that mentions truffle oil.
Choose among the remaining dishes.
 
P

Penasco Pirate

Guest
Not sure I've seen 'truffle oil' advertised in RP...let alone any of the high class eateries I eat at here!!:D
 

jerry

Well Known Member
From Chow on fake food:
When prices get higher, though, it becomes outright fraud. When you pay $50 an ounce for a truffle, you expect to be buying a black Périgord truffle (Tuber melanosporum) or a white truffle from Alba. But the heat wave of 2004 cut Périgord’s harvest down from 50 tons to 9 tons, and as the dollar stays weak against the euro, some restaurants and gourmet shops are passing off Chinese truffles (Tuber indicum) as French. But while the Chinese black truffle looks just like its French cousin, it tastes nothing like it. France is conducting random DNA testing on truffles, with a $1,300 fine for anyone caught trying to deceive consumers with Chinese truffles. Italy’s Consorzio, a government group that regulates the quality of agricultural products, has agents who travel to importers to ensure that truffles from Italy are actually what’s being sold (and assess fines if they’re not).

In a case like truffles, you can at least rely on your nose. Some counterfeiters use a chemical to simulate the truffle smell, but if you know what you’re sniffing for, you won’t be fooled. (Fake “truffle oil” is usually sunflower oil flavored with the chemical facsimile.) Not only are the two odors detectably different, but the Alba truffle fills a room in 20 minutes, while the fake packs a wallop right away and fades. “If you bring a truffle from Piemonte into a room, especially the white ones from Alba—the best and most expensive in the world—10 to 20 minutes later the moist, fungus smell will have taken over the room,” says Ascione. “It’s like if you walked inside a dark, humid cave; it’s that kind of freshness. That’s the truffle smell.”
 

jerry

Well Known Member
Truffle oil is often used as a lower cost and convenient substitute for truffles, to provide flavoring or to enhance the flavor and aroma of truffles in cooking. Most of the “truffle oil” used in the US however, does not contain any truffles.[15] The vast majority is olive oil which has been artificially flavored using a synthetic agent such as 2,4-dithiapentane. Daniel Patterson reported in the New York Times that "even now, you will find chefs who are surprised to hear that truffle oil does not actually come from real truffles." Many chefs continue to use inexpensive synthetic truffle oil, considering it to be "a reasonable substitute."
 

JimMcG

Well Known Member
Truffle oil is often used as a lower cost and convenient substitute for truffles, to provide flavoring or to enhance the flavor and aroma of truffles in cooking. Most of the “truffle oil” used in the US however, does not contain any truffles.[15] The vast majority is olive oil which has been artificially flavored using a synthetic agent such as 2,4-dithiapentane. Daniel Patterson reported in the New York Times that "even now, you will find chefs who are surprised to hear that truffle oil does not actually come from real truffles." Many chefs continue to use inexpensive synthetic truffle oil, considering it to be "a reasonable substitute."
Whats with the filibuster?;)
 

jerry

Well Known Member
TRUFFLE - We have now reached the gastronomes' sacrum sacrorum, a name that epicurians of all times have never pronounced without reaching for their hat, the tuber cibarium, the lycoperdon gulosorum, the truffle. You have asked scientists what this tubercule was, and after two thousand years of discussion the scientists have answered you "We do not know". You have asked the truffle itself and the truffle has answered you "Eat me and revere God."
 

rockyptjoe

Well Known Member
yadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayadayada
 

jerry

Well Known Member
Mexican Truffle or Mexican Corn Truffle (huitlacoche or corn smut)
Huitlacoche (also spelled “cuitlacoche") is a corn fungus (corn smut) that has long been popular in Mexican cuisine. In the 1980s, huitlacoche began to be introduced into American “Mexican” and “Tex-Mex” restaurants. Huitlacoche has been called the “Mexican truffle” (or “Mexican corn truffle") to highlight its appeal to refined culinary tastes.

In 1989, a dinner at the James Beard House in New York City (catered by Josefina Howard of the Rosa Mexicano restaurant) featured huitlacoche and other Mexican foods. Huitlacoche was promoted as the “Mexican truffle” at this dinner, in an effort to get Americans to try the unfamiliar food. The name “Mexican truffle” wasn’t coined at this dinner, however—“Mexican truffle” is cited in print in the 1988 Los Angeles (CA) Times.
 

caracolera

Junior Member
A great huitlacoche dish is the measure of a fine Mexican restaurant. If it's not great, it's not worth eating. i've had some very disappointing huitlacoche platillos in the South and a few great ones. It's most commonly prepared with chicken.

I am surprised to find the smut in Ley..."fresh" as well as canned.

Does anyone know any restaurants where they serve it here in PP?

La Caracolera
 
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