AND I thought that Truffle Fries were the ultimate gourmet comfort food! I discovered Truffle Fries a few years ago, during the opening of Chef Gino Gonzalez’s Buenisimo restaurant in the Tomas Morato restaurant area of Quezon City. I recreated it at home several times using U.S. Frozen Potatoes that are now readily available in the frozen section of major supermarkets, and I was pretty successful with my attempts.
Just recently, I discovered Truffle Popcorn when I attended the Craft Mania workshop session on calligraphy conducted by Anina Rubio at the East Wing Atrium of Shangri-La Plaza. The event also served as the launch of the mall’s Desserts Fair, which was taking place the weekend after Craft Mania. Since the Desserts Fair gathered together all the bakeshop and dessert a shop tenants of the mall, a number of them put together a dessert buffet during the Craft Mania workshop as a way of giving mall-goers a taste of what they have to offer. I got to taste a few of those delicious bite-sized treats, but I was most amazed to discover Truffle Popcorn. There was a small paper cup of popcorn that was placed in front of me. I thought it was regular popcorn, but when I dug into it and popped a few into my mouth, the essence of truffle filled my mouth and I was hooked. I love Sour Cream and Chives flavored popcorn and Wasabi popcorn, too, but this was something else. Worth loving, too!
So, a few days ago, when I was looking for something to munch on as I sat down to write articles, I remembered the Truffle Popcorn that caught my fancy and decided to make an attempt to replicate it. I reached for the small bottle of Sabatino Tartufi Olive Oil Infused with Black Truffle in my ref and used it to flavor my popcorn. It’s good! It would be better if I added more salt, but I consciously salted my popcorn very lightly to keep it healthy. It would probably also work even better if you use black truffle shavings, but that would make it very very expensive. So, I will stick to my Truffle Popcorn drizzled with truffle oil.
2 tbsps. olive oil
1 tbsp. Anchor Butter
drizzling of truffle infused olive oil
1/2 cup raw popcorn kernels
salt to taste
dried Porcini mushroom
1. Place olive oil, butter and a little truffle oil in large saucepan, stockpot or Dutch oven with lid. Heat just until butter is melted.
2. Add popcorn kernels and mix to make sure all kernels are coated with oil. Put the lid on and wait for the corn kernels to pop. Shake pan a bit every now and then.
3. When corn kernels start to pop, Shake the pan lightly to help get the corn kernels coated with hot oil and pop.
4. When the popping slows down to almost none, turn off heat.
5. Transfer the popcorn to a big bowl, drizzle with more truffle infused olive oil, season with salt and grate some dried Porcini mushroom from a mill.
6. Enjoy!
