[Sca-cooks] truffles

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Stefan li Rous:
>Thank you for the clarification. So what was the problem? Putting 
>the truffles in the refrigerator? Or waiting too long to prepare 
>them? Either way, it makes me wonder whether this is something the 
>chef should have known and if so, whether he is one who should have 
>been entrusted with cooking such an expensive treat. If he can't 
>store it properly, can he cook it properly? But then, some folks 
>seem to have too much money so I'm not going to cry for them and 
>their misfortune.

You might just cry for the dam' waste of it all, and the wanton 
destruction of an increasingly rare miracle of nature.

My guess as to what happened would fall somewhere between two 
scenarios: the first being that they had the truffle on display, and 
at night, instead of storing the truffle properly (they generally 
ship in the perfect packing medium: arborio rice, which keeps the 
truffle supported and dry, but also makes a stellar risotto when 
you're done using it as packing), they may have simply slid the 
entire display, or the part of it with the truffle in it, directly 
into the fridge, thinking that would be all right. For a tool whose 
purpose is to prevent decomposition, refrigerators can be remarkably 
unsanitary breeding grounds for bacteria if not cleaned regularly. 
Or, the second, that after several days at room temperature, the 
truffle simply "went to seed" and did not actually... um... putresce 
(is that a word?) in the way we traditionally interpret the word 
"rotten", but became unusable for direct culinary applications. After 
all, since virtually any culinary breakdown process (enzymatic 
degradation, oxidation, or any of a number of chemical processes) 
tend to be described by what I will charitably call the uninitiated 
as "rotten" and/or "fermented", we don't really know, from the news 
sources, the state of the truffle when it was deemed unusable; only 
that it was unusable.

In either case, I don't know whether to laugh or cry over the fact 
that such a valuable food item was entrusted to the care of someone 
who should have been the most qualified to deal with it, but who 
turned out to be among the least.

Adamantius, wishing he had the cash for a one-or-two-ounce white 
truffle right now...
-- 




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la 
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them 
eat cake!"
	-- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques 
Rousseau, "Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
	-- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry 
Holt, 07/29/04