How lucky am I? As a new food blogger, I have entered into a club of some of the most interesting foodies in Los Angeles who relish the idea of cooking up a storm for a boatload of friends. This is heaven for me and heaven it was when I was invited to fellow food blogger, Erika Kerekes’ home of In Erika’s Kitchen.com for her third annual feast called TrufflePalooza. She asked volunteers to help with the preparation, so I stepped right up to the challenge. All I have to do is show up with my apron and I am given expensive truffles to work with on dishes that someone else has spent hours creating? Sign me up. Call it a truffle love fest. 16 truffle laced dishes and 75 foodies is a great combination. What’s not to love?
I am pictured here sporting my La Cucina Italiana apron working with puff pastry dough to create the Truffled Puff Pastry Straws. Along with the buttery puff pastry, these delights contain Erika’s homemade truffle butter (yes churned by her in a food processor), truffle laced cheese, truffle salt and a generous shaving of truffles on a microplane zester. I must have made over 100 of these. YUMMMMHY!
My other fun assignments included slicing filet mignon for the Baguette slices lathered with Truffle Butter and Filet Mignon, steaming some Truffled Pork and Shrimp Shumai and serving them on Chinese porcelain spoons topped with truffles, ladling out some delicious Creamy Wild Mushroom Soup with Truffles and broiling up some halved California Figs with goat cheese and drizzling truffled honey hot out of the oven.
Click here to learn how to make fresh Baguettes for the Baguette slices lathered with Truffle Butter and Filet Mignon.
That night I had “truffle dreams” and a very satisfied palette. You’ve heard of “champagne and caviar dreams” coined by Robin Leach. That was so 20th century!
If you are curious to see the pictures from Truffle P
alooza, please visit InErika’s Kitchen.com where you can see the process of making Truffled Puff Pastry Straws.
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