Day 62: White Truffle Oil

I put white truffle truffle oil on just about anything. One of my favourite things is to put it on eggs, but I put it into pastas, into ground beef - I once put it into my cereal and regretted that day for the next 2 hours. It's a great substitute for truffles during the off season (although they are in season now, so no excuses), and also if you don't have the money to spend on truffles on your eggs.

The bottle in the foreground has the ingredient "white truffle flavour" in the ingredient list, and the shorter bottle in the background actually has white truffle oil slices inside of it. Yum. The flavoured oil actually had a stronger truffle flavour to it, I thought. The other one was weaker. They both cost around the same (~$17) although I did get the bottle with sliced truffles inside of it from Homesense on discount, and from what I gather, oil with sliced truffles usually costs a bit more.

I actually especially love putting it onto fresh field mushrooms.

Chef Gordon Ramsay has described white truffle oil as "one of the most pungent, ridiculous ingredients ever known to chef." But fortunately, I feel a lot of tv chefs like to make comments that sounds good, but really make no sense. For instance, like how everyone cooks with extra virgin olive oil, and claims that it tastes better, even in its cooked form! So while Ramsay may have the money to buy real truffles, I doubt many of his customers do, and so I would think they would benefit from this compromise.

On Truffle Oil: Truffle oil is a modern culinary ingredient, used to impart the flavor and aroma of truffles to a dish. Most truffle oils are not made from actual truffles, but are a synthetic product that combines a thioether (2,4-dithiapentane), one of numerous organic aromas or odorants found in real truffles, with an olive oil or grapeseed oil base. As with pure olive oils, these range from clear to cloudy, and yellow to green. A few more expensive oils are alleged to be made from truffles or the by-products of truffle harvesting and production, though the flavor of truffles is difficult to capture in an oil.

Truffle oil is commonly used to make "truffle fries," which feature french fries cooked in truffle oil, parmesan cheese, pepper, and sometimes other ingredients. Some pasta dishes and whipped dishes such as mashed potatoes or deviled eggs incorporate truffle oil.

Truffle oil, available in all seasons and steady in price, is popular with chefs (and diners) because it is significantly less expensive than actual truffles, while possessing some of the same flavors and aroma. The emergence and growth of truffle oil has led to an increase in the availability of foods claiming to be made with or flavored with truffles, in an era when the price of truffles has pushed them out of reach for most diners. "Their one-dimensional flavor is also changing common understanding of how a truffle should taste," Daniel Patterson complained in a New York Times article.

Day 45: "Ice Pressed" Olive Oil from McEwan's

This is the private label brand (kind of like the "President's Choice" of McEwan's) of Olive Oil. I was lucky enough to meet the farmer and processor of the oil who was in store that day, and sampled it, and talked a bit about the process.

A really fresh, refreshing flavour, with that grassy, earthy flavour that is a bit of an acquired taste, especially if, like me, you're more used to lighter tasting olive oils. The bottle shown costs about $18. A doubly sized President's Choice bottle would cost around $8.

I've never bought into the whole hype about olive oils. I like a fresh olive oil - so I buy labels that look like they move a lot of volume. I don't sit and taste olive oil the way I do a wine. I put it on food to give it flavour, and freshen up the texture a little bit, but that's it. Or I cook with it. Plus, an expensive olive oil that sits on the shelf for a long time, exposed to light, and temperature changes, is not going to be worth what you pay for it. For cooking, I wouldn't usually use extra virgin (unlike what the foodtv chefs recommend), because it's a total waste of money.

So I like the olive oil, but it's a total ripoff at that price point.

About Ice Pressed Olive Oil:

According to the farmer, it keeps the olives at a temperature of below 5 degrees while processing, so that you maintain that fresh olive flavour. "Cold Pressed" olive oil, despite its names, apparently goes to tempertures of over 20 degrees while processing. According to the McEwan website: "Enjoy the intense, rich flavour of this early harvest olive oil. It’s ice pressed, unfiltered and has an acidity of just 0.1%. Not a cooking oil, this variety adds exceptional flavour to your favourite dishes after they have been prepared."