Truffle!

In our house, I'm the baker and S is the cook.  While I think I have the better deal in never having to cook, I know S secretly thinks the same about me (he has a sweet tooth).  Thankfully we both love good food so we have every area covered (sweet and savoury).  

Now, since this is my blog, I was a little hesitant to write this post.  My little blog is for all things sweet (or baked) not savoury!  But this savoury dish is no ordinary dish so I couldn't resist (not to mention I really want to stop S from continuously nagging me about it!).

Truffles have become a big thing in Australia in the past few years but I wouldn't say people are cooking with them at home. Truffle oil? Yes.  But it doesn't compare to the real thing. Truffle oil has this distinct burst of truffle flavour, but you don't get all the different dimensions of flavour a real truffle has.  They are much more subtle than the oil, in a good way.  

A place in Western Australia, called Manjimup, has been growing truffles for a few years now, making it much easier to get your hands on one these days.  Well actually, we did have to pre order our truffle and we only just made the deadline for the last shipment of the season (they arrive within 48 hours of being plucked from the ground- across country).  Let's not even talk about price...  Anyway it is great that we can get our own truffles here in Australia; though I am longing to try a white truffle.  

Truffle in hand, it was time to decide what we were going to do with it.  Who am I kidding?  We had planned out the menu long before the truffle arrived and had even cleared our schedule to make sure we could enjoy our truffle marathon.  We chose to do a truffle risotto (cliche?) and truffle scrambled eggs.  We wanted to do dishes where we could really appreciate the flavour of the truffle.  We put the arborio rice into the bag with the truffle to let it infuse.  We also did this with the eggs.  It's amazing how much the scent infused!  We actually had enough truffle left to do an omlette with truffle the next day but changed our mind.  The eggs had only been in the bag with the truffle for 15 minutes so I thought they would be fine to pop back into the fridge to use later.  Well... when I went to make a cake the next day, as soon as I cracked open the egg, all I could smell was truffle!  Luckily it hadn't been in there long enough for the flavour to absorb.

The scrambled eggs were served on homemade bagels.  In Australia all I can seem to find are bread rolls with holes in the middle, claiming to be bagels.