Thursday, December 20, 2007

Pineapple and truffle salad

Odette at Reading Proust in Foxborough has been troubled, haunted even, by the pineapple and truffle salad mentioned in In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower: "Is it just me or does pineapple salad with truffles sound rather. . . unappetizing?"

I've searched online for pineapple and truffle, ananas and truffe, with no luck. Tonight though something prompted me to try Amazon's "Search Inside!" It was my mind, which said, "Try Amazon's 'Search Inside!'" And there was a recipe, on page 93 of Shirley King's Dining with Marcel Proust: A Practical Guide to French Cuisine of the Belle Epoque (Lincoln, NE: Bison Books, 2006), involving pineapple chunks and truffle strips in a vinaigrette, with chicory or endive as a garnish.

"It is pure ostentation," sniffs King, "to mix truffles with pineapple." She pronounces the resulting dish "pleasant though unusual."

Odette, I'll bring the canned pineapple.

Shirley King's Dining with Proust (Amazon)

All Proust posts (Pinboard)

comments: 5

x1x1x2 said...

This is actually a very delicious dish, I serve it for christmas every year, often with a little basil in it. No canned pineapple though, has to be fresh.

Michael Leddy said...

I was just joking about the canned. : )

Do you know this dish via Proust's novel?

Anonymous said...

I found this recipe in "Dining with Proust" by Anne Borrel and Jean-Bernard Naudin: "1 fresh pineapple, 1 small fresh truffle, 1 can of truffle juice. Remove the skin of the pineapple and cut the flesh into thin slices, removing the centres. Rinse the truffle in cold water, dry and slice thinly. Interleave the pineapple and truffle slices in a glass salad bowl, and pour in the truffle juice. Cover the bowl with cling wrap. Chill for 2 hours, gently moving the bowl occasionally so that the pineapple absorbs the truffle's delicate aroma."
I wonder what Francoise used for "cling wrap"?

Grapeshot/Odette said...

Hmmm. I hope it's tastier than it sounds. Think I will settle for the virtual recipe, but merci beaucoup for the Proust cookbook mention. It was flying under my radar. Wonder if it's like Monet's cookbook. At Monet's Table, the recipes were so simple that you just know the ingredients are fantastically fresh, so tasty they don't need a lot of seasoning and gussying up.

And my supermarket doesn't carry truffle juice. I guess a trip to France is in order.

Odette

Michael Leddy said...

Thanks for the recipe, Mari. My wife said she'd buy me a tiny truffle, but I haven't told her about the juice, which can be had online for a whole lotta money. I think Odette is right -- it's better to go to France.