Thursday 8th December 2011

Have you see the price of truffles recently?

Not the chocolate covered ones, but the real Italian, buried in the ground, found by pigs, pickled in aspic kind. I do. Now.

It all started with the pate. Somehow, we had a few packs, and I got thinking as to recipes that we could use some of it up in. My mind went to Turandot Rossinni. A dish we have had at one of our local pubs; fillet steak, fois gras, toast, and a rich sauce. That would be nice, no? So, I searched the interwebs for a good recipe, and found one that required just one spirit rather than three. I needed:

Madera
Beef stock
And truffles.

So, there is just the one place in Thanet that could provide such ingredients: Waitrose.

So, on the way back from work I headed over to Waitrose to search for the ingredients, and a walk up and down the aisles, I found the stock, and there in the same aisle was a tiny little jar with two little black lumps: truffles. £7.50. In the basket. And finally a cheeky bottle of vintage Madera. Oh look; next to it a small bottle of Vin Santos, a Tuscan dessert wine. Yes please.



And so, back home to get creative in the kitchen. I had to reduce the stock to a thick sauce, I boiled some sliced potatoes to make sauté, steamed some vegetables and opened a very good bottle of red. Just before it was all ready, I dry fried the pate, removed it and put it on the pan fried toast: I poured the Madera into the frying pan (I bottled the flambéing bit), added the stock, cooked the steak.

And there it was.

Phew!

And it was great; a real great combination of flavours, topped off by the slices of truffle on top of the steak. And that sauce, soaked up by the toast. Well, delicious.
For the rest of the evening I lay on the sofa and watched Chelski go through to the last 16 of the Champions League. Not a bad night.

And so, back to Sunday:

Why is it that on days when I can lay in bed all day, if I wanted, I am awake even earlier than weekdays? I was awake at 05:15; I got up and fed the cats then made a fresh pot of coffee, and then sat down to watch a recording of MOTD, with City’s game every bit as painful as a 5-1 defeat should be. In truth, we lost to a good team, maybe a great one, but we did ourselves no favours by not keeping possession and gifting Mancs the second goal. On the plus side we did keep playing, and we only have to play them twice in a season…..



After that, we went out for a walk. Well, we drove to the cliffs at Bluebirds, and then walked along the cliffs. It was cold and a little breezy. The only other people out were dogwalkers and golfers. The golfers were playing on Kingsdown course, but were up really early, and there was several of them. At one point, I crawled to the edge of the cliff, and with my arms stretched out before me, took some shots showing the sheer drop to the beach below.



Lunchtime, we headed over to the Dover Harbour Board club for Christmas dinner. Yes, Christmas. Jools’ Dad and his wife are heading to Australia for Christmas this weekend, and so last week was the last chance to get together and celebrate before they fly. It was OK, not that bad, really. We all sat round a table, there must have been a dozen of us, and chatted. It really is the only time the whole family gets together. There was a carvery, which was nice not to have to cook.



And by three we had all eaten our fill, and it was time to head off, and for some of us, a date with the sofa beckoned with me watching the afternoon game on TV.
And that was your weekend. Just a few more days until we do it all again.