Desperately Seeking Salem

There is a reason that the only sage diet advice I hear repeated with any credulity is to avoid cream-based sauces.

However, when consumer magazines tell me not to do something, my instinct is to do it. Heavier and thicker, with more gusto, like I was being paid to devour this butter-rich, creamy, smooth sauce which has equal parts sin and salvation.

All this sauce took was a little garlic, a lot of butter, a lot of cream, some less-than-worthy button mushrooms from Olympia, WA that I picked up at Jack’s over on Market (we were hungry, we were tired), and a whole lotta mixing to taste.

The taste, when jazzed up with a tablespoon of Oregon black truffles, is just about enough to bowl me over. It is certainly enough to make me regret eating so much.

I added these truffle shavings at the last moment, after the sauce had boiled to a proper thickness and cooled a bit off the burner. Then I stirred in the truffles and gave them a minute or two to work their truffle magic — you know, the meet and greet I’ve talked about in previous posts, which allows the truffles to coax out the right flavors and scents in the other ingredients.

This was by far the best use of the truffle in my household this week.

Can you have too many truffles?

No.

Can you eat too many truffles?

Yes.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 17th, 2009 at 9:26 am 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.