truffle omelette, young Bordeaux

Packing Up

It's my last night in Cambridge before the Christmas vacation. I should be packing up to go home, but I'm not. I've had a truffle omelette and two little glasses of very young Bordeaux. I wasn't good wine, but it went well with the omelette, satisfying for its uncomplicatedness. The truffle I used didn't have a truffle's proper hit. I don't know where the grocer got it from. You flounder for a description of what a truffle's proper hit should be, but funky earth comes close, I think. Its pungent fragrance has, at least, something of sex and of the ground.

Three eggs forked vigorously for half a minute in a hot pan of foaming butter, and the omelette - save its grating of truffle into the still unset centre and good-humoured forward roll onto a warm plate - was done. Good eggs and good butter made up for the bland fungus but I wished it had been better.

With it, I had a salad of walnuts, stilton and little gem lettuce, its leaves torn off into boats, laid attractively on a dish, dressed with olive oil, lemon, a good few flakes of salt: receptacles for the cheese and walnuts.

Toasting the nuts first brings out their fragrance and it's an excellent one, both with truffle and Stilton's salt tang.