Truffle Fries

The fresh truffle season is now over but I have a bounty of truffle products from the Mundaring Truffle Festival leftover. Every time I open my cupboard and see the truffle oil, truffle honey and truffle sherry vinegar I ask myself “what am I supposed to do with you all?” These are truffle products, so they must be used with caution and sparingly too. I can’t just go and use the truffle oil to cook up a stir fry (however, this is an untested assertion so I may experiment a bit and get back to you).

That’s the problem with food festivals, the copious amount of free tastings and gadget demonstrations inevitably result in you leaving with a bag of goodies. A whole bunch of products - sauces, snacks, and condiments that you wouldn’t normally buy and another fruit and veggie peeler/chopper to add to your growing collection where at first your relationship with it is like a child with a new toy but now it’s left for dead at the bottom of your drawer as you buy another that is sharper, chops faster and requires less cleaning.

But I will not leave these truffle products to rot in my cupboard. I am determined to find ways to use them in recipes. After all, this was one of the reasons why I started a food blog – as a way to motivate myself to cook new things and then post about my food endeavours.

While googling truffle oil I came across recipes for truffle fries. Truffle fries are basically fries coated with truffle oil. If you want to up the ante, you can add garlic, parsley and parmesan. Fried potato coated with crushed garlic, chopped parsley, gratings of parmesan and a drizzle of truffle oil…without having ever eaten truffle fries I knew that they would taste good.

Cook the fries in whatever manner you like. I didn’t deep fry my truffle fries. I generally don’t cook a lot of dishes that require deep frying because I don’t know what to do with all the oil afterwards, seems a waste to just throw away but I don’t cook fried foods at home often enough to warrant keeping it, and it's not always reusable especially if I have been frying foods with batter. So I cooked these truffle fries by parboiling the potatoes first and then roasting them in the oven. Of course I didn’t achieve the crunch of deep fried fries but the result was still pretty good.

I made a batch of truffle fries for my friends to try after we had a big night out. The verdict was that truffle fries are good for a hangover.

Ingredients

•    3 large potatoes
•    olive oil
•    freshly cracked salt and pepper
•    2 - 3 cloves crushed garlic
•    ~ 1 tablespoon chopped parsely
•    ~ ¼ cup grated parmesan
•    1-2 tablespoons of truffle oil to taste

Method

Peel potatoes and cut into ½ inch thick slices, then soak the fries in cold water for an hour (this helps to get rid of the starch). Drain the potatoes.

Places the potatoes in a pot with cold salted water. Bring to a gentle boil and simmer for 7-8 minutes. Drain potatoes in a colander and place the potatoes on paper towels and pat dry.

Put all the potatoes in a bowl, add olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Toss well to coat and lay out in a later on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper.

Roast the fries for 30-40 minutes until crisp and golden. Halfway through the cooking time, take the tray out and turn the fries over so that they cook evenly.

When the fries have finished roasting heat up a little olive oil in a wok and slightly fry the crushed garlic. Turn off the heat and then add in the fries, parsley and parmesan. Toss everything together. Add the truffle oil at the end just before serving, drizzle truffle oil over the fries and toss to combine. Drizzle the truffle oil in a little at a time and taste until you get the desired amount of truffle flavour in your fries. I added in about 1 ½ tablespoons of truffle oil so the flavour was quite subtle.