Alinea @ Home: Hot Potato/Cold Potato

Alinea @ Home: Hot Potato/Cold Potato

Inspired by the Alinea book, and by Nick Kokonas’ words of advice (and I paraphrase, “it’s just rich mushroom soup with warm potatoes”), I took the plunge tonight and made my first recipe from this hefty tome.

I used black truffle butter to substitute for the real thing, and a fair quantity of white truffle oil (from Olive & Well). My chives have long ago succumbed to the cold, so I used a scallion, which seemed to work just fine. Here’s how mine looked:



Here’s how the Chef Achatz version looked:


[Thanks to ronnie_suburban for this pic]


[Thanks to yellowtruffle for this pic]

My rather unextraordinary rendition may seem sad and pathetic compared to the original preparation, but I got oohs and ahhs from The Wife and a buddy who dropped in. They had seconds and thirds, and commented, without prodding, about the interesting temperature differential, which confirmed the culinary wisdom of this conjunction of thermal qualities…plus, it’s a cold night and spud soup is comforting.

Overall, a successful dish that I would make again. It’s potato, warm and cool, with the essence of two kinds of truffle; how could it not be good?

Hammond

As Nick has said recently, you can't go wrong with potatoes, butter and truffles...

I was lucky enough this week to have this course paired with the Black Truffle Explosion - wowza!

Great recipe...

Very nice, David! This one's basically comfort food (not so) in disguise. I have loved reading this book but have yet to cook from it. I think that's about to change.

BTW, here's a pic of the pairing to which Snark refers above . . .


Hot Potato, Cold Potato & Black Truffle Explosion

David, if you can pull off the BTE at home, I'll be happy to come over and sample it!

BTW, did you wear your chef's toque while making this?

=R=

You wouldn't believe the things Oak Parkers wear chef's toques during.

Poor Steve Dahl...he's going to have to join the forum now, he can't defend himself on the air...