Two short updates courtesy of the RACV

VANILLA SLICE

Back from holidays you try to catch up on all the junk mail - well most of it goes straight into the bin, but some of it is worth a scan. And the RACV magazine came up with a couple, well actually potentially more, of things for the blog.

The first is this photograph which is completely over the top and which adorned the front cover of the magazine. It's a car magazine for heaven's sake! Well not much anymore. The cars are tucked away at the back of the magazine. Mostly it's about touristy kind of things, which is rather more interesting really.

Some time ago now I wrote about vanilla slice, and I don't really have anything much to add to what I wrote there. It was in the RACV magazine because it's the time of the Great Australian Vanilla Slice Triumph. Interestingly as I look again at the article I see that the RACV forgot to say when the competition takes place - it's in MIldura though. Still a bit of an oversight you would think. They didn't even give the website address. I'm sure there is one. They have recently introduced an innovation section which includes different flavours such as pina colada, pumpkin, beetroot, peppermint, mocha and cherry ripe. Beetroot! Imagine the above picture with beetroot red innards. But the classic is still the thing.

"Pastry layering or lamination, and the resulting delicate crunch, is critical to competition success as is the consistency of the custard and the balance of its vanilla flavour."

So says the RACV writer. I don't know who won this year, but I gather it can make a huge difference to a business, and from there to the district in which the business resides. A boon to country Victoria. For it is a Victorian thing.

TRUFFLES

In the same magazine there was a short article on truffle growing in Victoria and Australia in general. I wrote about truffles fairly recently and the mystique that surrounded them. But this article had a completely Australian perspective.

It featured one particular grower on the Mornington Peninsula but it had quite a lot of interesting information about the expanding Australian industry.

I gather you start a truffle farm, if that is what you can call it, with imported trees that have been impregnated with the truffle spores. You plant them and you sit back and wait. Fifteen years before you get a real harvest. Though the lady in the article was got her first truffle after five years. So it's a long-term investment. When they'r ready you get a dog to find them.

The dogs that find them cost around $12,000 each. And yet, it's obviously a growing thing. Near Flowerdale - not all that far north of here, there is a farm currently planting 20,000 trees, and it is expected that by 2020 Australia will be producing some 20,000 kilos per year. Just when the Europeans need them - in their off season.

There were a couple of other things that I found rather endearing about this tale of Australian truffles.

First the price. One grower said that in spite of all those tales of thousands of dollars a kilo, in actual fact the wholesalers paid considerably less than that. No picturesque truffle markets here I suspect - more boxed up and trucked overseas and into the cities.

"For many years the industry has been saying it's the most expensive ingredient in the world and it's not. Three to five grams of truffle per person in a course will make a dish magic. The expense is the same as a bottle or two of wine." Nigel Wood, Truffle Melbourne

Local truffles are not yet in your local supermarket though. Or even your local deli, let alone your local farmer's markets.

The other thing was the lack of secrecy. I think I mentioned that in France and Italy the producers are very wary of telling anyone where their truffles come from. Here they are making tourist dollars out of it. Bed and breakfasts, markets and truffle hunts, lectures and special truffle meals. It's all part of growing the industry. Very enterprising.

Good on em, say I.