Desperately Seeking Salem

When I was living in Germany in my early twenties, spring always meant asparagus season.

Cafes would whip out chalkboard signs listing their featured asparagus dishes: ham and asparagus, asparagus soup, asparagus with new potatoes. I even bought a completely ludicrous kitchen implement — a set of asparagus tongs — to commemorate my time in a country where asparagus is crowned king every April.

I ran into some of these regal rods while at Fred Meyer on Lancaster Drive NE yesterday and just about flipped. A whole stand occupied the  entrance to the produce section.

“Oh happy day!” I yelled, because they had the white kind — the lesser known, but secretly devoured regal queen to the green asparagus.

The guy loading the garlic smiled at me and said: “That’s why we put them there.”

Sadly, these asparagus were from Peru. Yes, this is a tragic story of well-traveled food that arrives on the plate woodier and blander than its local brethren.

Still: if you can get some around here soon, and it’s produced closer to home, I highly recommend them. Eating them is a little like crunching on a ghost of asparagus past.

On to truffles.

I always make my own salad dressing. Always. Salads are the one thing I do completely right. Salad simply tastes more delicious with homemade dressing, and if you’re trying to eat more vegetables, which is pretty much everybody these days, a good dressing will make your fresh ones pop.

So to top off my white asparagus, tomato and green onion salad, I whipped up a basic vinaigrette using — you guessed it, truffle shavings.

I whisked some cut truffle in a few tablespoons of olive oil and let it soak, added a little balsamic — maybe two teaspoons, and sprinkled in some basil and thyme.

I dropped the additional shavings on some slices of brie on sliced French bread, and baked in the oven for about 16 minutes at 400 degrees.

When poured over piping hot spring vegetables, truffle vinaigrette makes even a salad feel like a meal.

(Yeah right).

We were still hungry after this lite supper, so I baked a chocolate souffle from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, perhaps the worst cookbook on record for somone who hates to follow directions.

As it was steaming off on the table, I sliced it down the middle and dropped some truffle shavings in there as well.

Lesson? Truffles. Good in vinaigrette. Bad on souffle. This souffle, which has a bechamel base,  was so rich that it completely overwhelmed the truffle scent.

Thankfully, I only used a few sprinklings. Thankfully, I didn’t pay for these truffles except for with the sweat off my back.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 16th, 2009 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.