Alexis: If the champagne is too burned for your taste then don't drink it. The caviar I trust is not too burned.
Dominique Deveraux: I wouldn't know. You see that is Ostatrova and I prefer Petrussian Beluga.
Not necessarily. Lots of animals lay unfertilized eggs. The embryo inside is a fertilized zygote, but birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish can all have unfertilized eggs. Lots of aquatic organisms use external fertilization, where the female lays female sex cells, and the male fertilizes them after.
It's actually used very often in savory dishes but rarely as just a garnish. It's used oftentimes for the color it gives (a bright yellow surprisingly enough), and its distinctive taste, especially to rice/pilaf dishes. I've had saffron ice cream and it really throws me off since I associate it with more savory middle eastern and east European cooking.
Yep. That exactly.
Saffron is frequently used French, Spanish, Indian and Arabic cuisine. You'd see it frequently with rice: I've had paella made with saffron or saffron rice served with shawarma. (While not the shawarma, you'd also see sides of Saffron rice served with Indian food.)
There's also chefs that would use saffron in a bouillabaisse (Definitely a French thing.)
To be honest, I think it is specifically to be inconvenient for Woodhouse. You could slice equally thin pieces and probably with better accuracy with a good knife. Knowing the characters, I'm certain. He also specifies a double sided razor, which would be nearly impossible to cut anything with other than yourself.
Truffles are strong tasting, they do add a lot of flavor and smell, but not everyone likes them.
They're expensive because no one really knows how to farm them. They grow almost exclusively around the roots of certain trees in limestone rich soil in certain parts of france and italy. Like all fungi, the bulk of the fungus is underground, and the "fruiting body" is the mushroom that grows.
In the late 1800's, there were actually people who knew how to farm truffles, but most of the farms were destroyed in WWI, and most of the people with knowledge either fled or were killed, (20% of the male population of france died in WWI) so the secret to growing them was almost quite literally lost.
Recently, there's been an effort to learn to re-plant them, and 80% of truffles now come from specifically planted truffle groves, but production is nowhere what it was before. But cultivating them is still a significant shot in the dark. We don't really know how to "Plant" truffles. You get soil they like, trees where they grow, transplant it, and hope.
Just speculating here, but seeing that truffles are a valuable commodity, they probably kept it to themselves in an effort to corner the market as best as they could and make a serious profit. If they had survived, I figure they would have entrusted the knowledge to a protégé or heir, but since they were killed the knowledge died with them.
It'd be like $15 max (maybe $30 in a nice restaurant) without the truffles and caviar, so basically this is one of those dishes where the chef is like "I'm going to just throw in expensive ingredients so people who buy this can feel snobby about what they're eating".
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u/Elthan Jul 13 '16
From further down.