Gutter Butter: January 2007 Archives

Fresh truffles are ridiculously expensive. The ones you are looking at go for $2000 per pound, approximately $350 each. Why in gods name would anyone pay so much for something that looks like a blonde dirt clod? What do they even taste like anyway?

"They taste like blood! They taste like sex! They taste like DEATH! "
(the actual words of one of Alex's truffle customers)

In the height of white truffle season, culinary maniacs the world over break their banks for the chance to shave these weird pseudo-fungi over their scrambled eggs, risottos or their oiled naked bodies. In the States underhanded truffle peddlers will try and swindle Chefs with false truffles from Hungary or Croatia. European truffle hunters will go so far as to poison their competition's truffle sniffing dogs and hogs to get a competitive edge.

Here's a few demystifying bullet points in the event that you are confronted with these diamonds in the rough, either on your plate or at your favorite gourmet shop:

1. "True" truffles come from two places. Black truffles form Perigord, France, and White truffles from Alba, Italy. There are "alse" black truffles cultivated in China, Australia, and Oregon, but their perfume and flavor are super mild. False white truffles from Eastern Europe are likewise: weak sauce.

2. Truffles aren't mushrooms. They're a tuber, like a potato, that basically grows like a pungent tumor on the roots of an Oak tree. They smell like sweet genitalia and taste like blood, sex and death...

3. The reason for the insane price has to do with the rarity of truffles and the short length of their season. Whites are only harvested from mid November to mid December, blacks from mid December to mid January. Ain't no shortcuts with truffles. You wait for an entire year and hope that the elements have aligned to make these little stinkers. There are also extreme and fixed import tariffs on truffles. Sadly, if your truffles aren't fucking pricey, they prolly aren't real.

Obviously truffles are intimidating in price, but if you buy them yourself you'll get to play around with a few dishes instead of spending the same amount of your paycheck on one plate of risotto at a restaurant. If you buy a truffle, keep it wrapped in a paper towel in a sealed plastic bag. Change its "diaper" every day, and shave it over your favorite dishes...or yourself.

For our third and final ketchup recipe we decided to take a step back in time. 101 years ago, a mysterious Sister Alice Trimmer sketched a formula for her cold catsup. Staying true to her words we "did not put anything hot about it," so this ketchup is both concocted and served cold. After converting her quantities into more manageable figures, from pecks and teacups to regular cups and teaspoons, we whipped up our version of this unique sauce. This is unlike any ketchup you will have ever tasted: it has no sugar and it's raw. It's reminiscent of a proto American salsa, without the heat of course. We served with an assortment of fried roots (recipe forthcoming). You can serve it with just about anything that you would normally serve ketchup with: eggs, other fried things...um, etc.Hotknives' Sisters' Cold Ketchup

6 medium sized ripe tomatoes
2 Tbs. pickled horseradish
2 Tbs. mustard flour
2 Tbs. caraway seeds
1 Tsp. celery seeds
2 Tbs. sea salt
1 Tbs. ground black pepper
1+3/4 cup red wine vinegar
2 Tbs. chopped fresh dill

1. Slice the tops off your tomatoes and carefully peel, then trash the skin and finely chop them. When chopped, dump all the into a fine mesh sieve over a bowl to catch their juice

2. Now, with a mortar and pestle grind all the salt and spices together. Add the spices, horseradish, and vinegar to the chopped tomatoes and mix.

3. If you have a food processor, pulse the mixture for thirty seconds. Strain the mixture again until the sauce has a dippable consistency. The extra liquid can be whisked into the tomato juice to make a great salad dressing, a fine compliment to an all fried food meal.

Soundtrack: Friends of Old Time Music, Disk 2
Beverage: Port Brewing's Avante Guard

Speaking of cheese, here's one of those heartfelt, unpaid product endorsements we like so much. Lisanatti Premium Soy-Sation shredded cheese -- which we found in a Trader Joe's, but can probably be found in most mom and pop granola health food stores -- is the best we've tasted for one very important reason: it feels like cheese.

Granted, this is merely an imitation of the kind of shredded cheese that gets sprinkled on enchiladas or chili or something. It's the classic trio: mild cheddar, Monterey jack and cheap mozzarella. Much like the real thing, the imitation is rather dull, even inedible, by itself and cold.However -- and this is essential really -- the stuff melts as well or better than shredded dairy cheese. Under a broiler, in a microwave or merely folded into a warm dish, Soy-Sation gets gooey and stays that way. When you pull a fork-full of food away from the plate, the cheese actually strings. What this is great for then, are dishes where the taste of a sharp or tasty cheese is unnecessary but the texture of pillowy melted cheese is desired.

Here's a recipe for western-style hangover hash browns that is perfect example of what Lisanatti can help you do with a little soy.