Truffle Salt heralds a return!

Hey all,

Sorry I took the summer off - I got carried away with trips to California and cruises to Alaska.

It was my first time on a cruise ship and I was NOT impressed by the food. And don't get me started on the condiments. It was really about quantity, not about dipping sauce. But I do like laying around a boat for a week. And Baby Balsamic made quite a mess of herself with one of the finest condiments in the history of indulgent delights - hot fudge sauce. And we saw a bear. And bear poop - which just might be a condiment to SOME species somewhere.

Anyway, I belong to a delightful foodie group - Memento dining club! Here's our deal - there are six couples (actually 5 couples and 1 delightful woman with enough looks and cooking skills for 2!) We meet up about every 2 months for a night of gastronomic excess - 2 appetizers, 1 salad, 2 entrees, 1 dessert. The person making the dessert course comes up with their dessert and tells the people making entree 2. The person making entree 2 comes up with something that would precede the dessert well, then tells the person making entree 1 what entree 2 is. They do not tell what dessert is going to be. So, you only know what's coming after you, not what's coming before you. And we have themes - asparagus, farmer's market, tropical rainbow, etc.

We've had some amazing dinners. Some highlights that I will blog about in the future:

- cured lemon peel preserve - an amazing salad garnish
- bacon infused old fashioned - nothing takes the sting off whiskey like bacon fat!
- creme fraiche - apply to the thigh via the mouth. Totally worth the tight pants the next day!

However, at our last dinner, we were served a rich pasta dish that had a flavor I hadn't experienced before. It was musky and sophisticated. Salty, but with a range of savory flavor.

Truffle salt. So intense. So different. Putting it on eggs or pasta or a salad is like looking meeting up with an old dear friend and discovering that they also understand the complete mystery of the night skies, that they've seen the seven wonders of the world, peeked under Nefertiti's mask. The truffle flavor has so much depth and complexity and history. It's hard to explain that it tastes old, but it's not old like spoiled or musty. It sparks memories. It's the fourth dimension.

Of course, truffles are incredibly expensive. They were selling them at my favorite high-end market - Metropolitan Market - for $159 a pound. The jar of truffle salt I bought for Mr. Mustard cost about $20. But man, it was worth draining Baby Balsamic's college fund for this!

The brand I've been using is Casina Rossi Truffle & Salt. Their website is down, which allowed me to find a new website name I adore - www.thefrenchybee.com.

Truffle salt is a great way to experience the truffle flavor combined with an everyday flavor (salt).

I highly recommend it. Next time I take a cruise, I want it to be one of those luxury ones where they have it on all the tables. Yum.

Condiment Grrl

Finally - Bacon done right in a Product!

Regular readers of my column will recall that I have reviewed and subsequently eschewed both Bacon Salt and Baconnaise. They are bad, chemically infused imitations of the truth, the bacon salt especially.

I then formally declared far and wide, to all those who would listen to my ramblings, that bacon is ONLY good in its original form. You cannot transform it into another substance. And so it was said and the people all obeyed me as they are wont to do.

BUT! I have been proven wrong in the form of Mo's Bacon Bar -- a product of a newish chocolate company - Vosges Haut Chocolate.

This is a tiny little picture, I know, but the real box is a thing of beauty. And the chocolate, well it worked! I was a bit dubious, given that the main ingredients on the box are listed as:

• applewood smoked bacon
• alderwood smoked salt (although I am recent convert to the salt + chocolate combo)
• deep milk chocolate (not my usual favorite, but they have just come out with a dark chocolate bacon bar! Let the world rejoice!)

But it found just the right balance -- the bacon actually hit your taste buds first, then, unexpectedly blossomed into chocolate. And, rather than seeming out of place, it was like a sense of deja vu, "oh there you are bacon and chocolate combination. I've always known about you in my heart of hearts."

Now, I could engage in a hearty round of mea culpa, but, upon careful inspection of the chocolate (the things I do for you people!), I find that I am actually seeing little bits of bacon embedded in the chocolate, so I am not wrong. Bacon is best in its original form and yummy when intertwined with chocolate.

But let me leave you with the words of the founder of Vosges Chocolate, who almost seems like a Colette for food. Her goal is to "Travel the World through Chocolate in a mission to create a sustainable, luxury chocolate experience, to bring about awareness of indigenous cultures through the exploration of spices, herbs, roots, flowers, fruits, nuts, and the obscure."

And, here's how she (or a very clever copy-writer who is clearly my twin) describes this bar (I do like that she's a bit of a food whore like me):

"Breathe…engage your five senses, close your eyes and inhale deeply. Be in the present moment, notice the color of the chocolate, the glossy shine. Rub your thumb over the chocolate bar to release the aromas of smoked applewood bacon flirting with deep milk chocolate. Snap off just a tiny piece and place it in your mouth, let the lust of salt and sweet coat your tongue. "

I almost want to tell her to get a room, but I know where she's coming from. Enjoy!

Oh for heaven's sake, everyone knows that Hollandaise isn't Dutch!

A friend pointed me to an article on CNN about the origins of some condiments. It's a little bit interesting, but it's just your basic -- "and then they had a dude ranch and then they made ranch dressing." It's pretty light -- no backstory on the combining of the ingredients, the subsequent tastings, the discovery of what the condiment worked with and didn't work with...and so on..



Anyway, I think, and I'm not bragging kind of, that my post on the origin of Norman Bishop Dill Garlic mustard is far more informative. And it's totally 100% true!

The Pimento -- the Quiet Friend Who Wears Glasses

Okay, y'all, I've been hanging onto an empty jar for awhile, waiting for some time to crop up to blog about this MOST AMAZING OLIVE. And now that I've downloaded the new Green Day, I feel the time is write to reveal that I'm leaving all my other Olive relationships for this one --

Ybarra Aceitunas Manzanilla verdes OR A green olive stuffed with Pimento.

Now, before you say, "Oh, Condiment Grrl, COME ON, those olives are everywhere. And salty and BORING." That's what I said to when I first viewed the jar, introduced to me by Mr. Mustard (and it was introduced to him by a good friend, another foodie, as available at the amazing Big John's PFI (Pacific Food Imports) in SODO). But, then the jar was opened and I tasted the olive.



OH MY GOODNESS!

It was kind of like in those ridiculous Chick movies where there's the silent friend with glasses who never says anything, but who swirls in in divine purple chiffon with no glasses (because glasses are ugly, right?) and leaves everyone gasping for air with his/her attractiveness, general desirabilty, and oddly detailed knowledge about erogenous zones.

These olives take the glasses off the misunderstood pimento. Until you've tasted these olives, you haven't really tasted pimentos. Honestly, I don't think I ever really understood what a real pimento tasted like before because most pimento stuffed olives are so so so so salty.

Not these, there's this wonderful rich flavor -- I can't really describe it and do it justice -- but, it's kind of peppery, kind of musky, and wonderful that imbues the olives. They're not overwhelmed with sodium. They exist in their own pimento-stuffed olive world -- glorious, green, red and perfect.



Anyway, here's a picture of a related jar. I couldn't find an exact one on the web:

Take out the picture of the garlic and mentally put in a lovely red pimento, looking oddly like a pair of very kissable lips, with or without glasses.

Enjoy!

Artichoke Mousse -- one item too many

I carry a heavy load; although, I like to think I embrace zen philosophy, in reality there are too many "things" I feel I need: warm socks, thin socks, warm pants, thin leggings, a book to read, another book to read in case I finish the first book, another book in case I don't like or get bored with one of the other books, a brown sweater, a black sweater, boots, tennis shoes and sandals. You name it, I feel I need it.

And, occasionally, a glass jar or two is lodged in my suitcase. Perhaps I am going to a desolate land without decent condiments (you know who you are) and I need to bring a spice or mustard or two to keep my spirits up. Perhaps, I discovered a new thing that I must bring home to take up yet more space in my groaning refridgerator door.

I was just down in California caring for an extremely cranky and doped up Big Mama Salsa post-shoulder surgery and I had to hie myself to the nice market near her house on several occasions. They have an okay condiment collection -- I discovered the Napa Valley line there, which I adore -- but they are a small space that serves a certain area of Oakland and for some reason, they'd prefer to have more "food." Whatever.

Anyway, on one of those missions of mercy, I strode down the condiment aisle to see what's what and saw a coy little jar winking at me from the shelf. It had little round sides and an intriguing condiment name: Artichoke Mousse. Mmmm...the tangy unique flavor of the artichoke enmeshed in a cream base. Very intriguing. And not only that, the little hussy was on sale!

I tucked the jar in my bag and headed home. And after Big Mama Salsa had thrown her plate of food at me for the umpteenth time and demanded more percocet, I opened the jar to see if it could sweep me from the house of recovery and into a place with rainbow ponies and no weak shoulders or slippery stairs or stubborn mothers who refuse to move their bedrooms down to the first floor.

Sadly, there were no rainbow ponies awaiting the bottom of the spoon. It was a very faint artichoke flavor with a bland cream sauce. I expected artichoke mousse to bring home some of her good friends: lemon, vinegar, sesame, SOMETHING. But it was sadly bland and I couldn't help but regret the Weight Watchers points wasted on this bland concoction.

Which is a travesty because condiments should NEVER make us feel we have unwillingly ingested fat. We should delight in the oil or the cream or the butter, not feel ashamed.

There was no space in my bag for the artichoke mousse. Nor is there space in this blog for the name of the artichoke mousse. It is a mystery best left unspoken.

Condiment Grrl

As It Says in the Good Book...

of something or other, as quoted to me by an old friend who's a Unitarian Minister, in response to my bacon salt posting:

"In my house we use salt as a gentle memory of bacon's greater promise..."

Now, here's a religion that I could BEE-LIEEVVE in. Maybe I already do...

A Treatise on Bacon Salt

As I sit here at my computer (obviously), listening to a variety of tunes on Random Play (Fleetwood Mac, then Green Day, then Shirley Temple. Awesome) after spending entirely too long on Facebook (or Crackbook), I am aware of the transient nature of technology and community and networking and music. We all flow apart, then sometimes find each other again, at different places in life, but still connecting on the same old jokes and shared memories. Then sometimes you start to build something new, some new strange connection that initially makes no sense, but in your new life, with your new hair and your new love of mushrooms and possible acceptance that everything Neil Diamond recorded wasn't total crap, it makes sense.

Sort of like Bacon Salt. "You have a friend request from Bacon Salt."

On first take, it makes no sense. Bacon is meat and salt is a condiment. Does not compute. They are two different substances. They serve two different purposes. But then you stop and think about the experience of eating bacon. Of course, there's the delicious sizzling smell, the grease squirt as you bite into a perfectly cooked piece, the feel of the slice in your hand (only heathens and lovers of zuchini bread cut their bacon with a knife and fork), and the flavor of the bacon sliding down your throat, the tingling salt and nitrates.

Stop! Salt?

Hmmm...maybe this does make sense. Bacon is very salty due to all the preservatives and smoking and things they do to it to turn it from pig into bacon (I just re-read "Little House in the Big Woods" and I know all about this process now.) So...what is bacon flavor? Is it the actual meat or is it the chemicals that go into the processing of the meat? What came first -- the meat or the chemicals (or condiments) that create the bacon?

Sometimes I like bacon bits on my salad. I always like salt. What if the two were combined? Would I get the succulent crackling sensation or would I get more of a chemical burning of my taste buds?

So, I put bacon salt on my salad. And I am sad to report that I found that I missed the meat. The chemical burning won out. It was just too...too...unnatural. The flavor was too removed from the actual flavor of the food. I like bacon flavor, but I also need the fat, the grease, the slice in my hand to fully enjoy the experience. I'll just have my salt separately.

I am ignoring the Friend Request from Bacon Salt.

What's this? A Friend Request from Baconnaise? Hmm...I shall have to explore