I’ve got a new personal hero.
His name is Jack Czarnecki and he is the owner and former chef of the Joel Palmer House, the Dayton, Ore. restaurant that arguably uses more domestic truffles than any other in the United States.
Czarnecki recently passed his toque blanche to his 31-year-old son Chris, an Iraq War veteran who has been shaking things up and introducing some new dishes to the JPH menu over the past year. You can find a recipe of one of his new masterpieces, Angel Hair Pasta with Dungeness Crab, here.
I’ve tried the dish. Eating it makes me feel like Valentine Michael Smith in Stranger in a Strange Land – like I’m a Martian that is experiencing the whole world anew, the befuddling beauty of everything.
But his dad is the one who has my heart. I started tagging along with Jack Czarnecki on his body-breaking truffle hunts last spring, when Oregon’s spring black truffles were in bloom. I later joined him for a white truffle hunt – the result of which is a longish feature story and profile, out this week in the latest issue of Edible Portland (scroll to p. 46 for the goods, photographer Sarah Henderson took the sexy food photos).
Jack is crazy in the forest. He digs in the dirt with a zeal that can last for hours at a stretch. It is back-breaking labor that never gets old for him — not when he doesn’t find a truffle for two hours, not when the patch he is digging in doesn’t yield. He’s exactly the kind of person I like to write about — a little nuts about what he does,very smart man doing very physical work, a visionary in overalls.
Now, not everyone can afford to buy truffles. I certainly can’t. But what Jack has actually done is create America’s first truffle oil. Truffle oil? You’ve probably had it on French fries or drizzled on risotto in upscale restaurants. But it wasn’t necessarily the real deal. There’s been a truffle oil backlash of late based on the revelation that most of the oils being used in America are synthetic.
In other words, most people are faking it.
And while I admit that it seems completely ridiculous to get caught up in most foodie rows over authenticity, truffle oil is something I am happy to get angry about. Reminds me of that time I was in a restaurant in Venice and the proprietors served me red wine in a water glass and were laughing because they thought I, stupid americana, wouldn’t know the difference.
Jack’s not a faker. He’s developed a system to capture the organic essence of the truffle in an oil in a safe way and is now selling bottles of it for $30 a pop from his website. It’s expensive, but if you like your eyes rolling back in your head and you use only a few drops at a time…
At least that’s what I tell myself when I use it. I’m kind of partial to a few little driplets on some homemade potato pancakes.
Makes me feel like I’m eating Oregon.
