Crème fraîche (pronunciation : /ˌkrɛmˈfrɛʃ/,
lit. "fresh cream") is a soured cream containing
30–45%. It is soured
with bacterial
culture, but is less sour than U.S.-style sour cream, and has a
lower viscosity and a higher fat
content. Wikipedia
Truffles. Homemade chocolate truffles. It was 2005, we were
about to host over 40 people at our house for our Absolut Thirty birthdays bash
and my chocolate truffles were on the top of a very long menu. I find truffle
making relaxing and theraputic, and I always look forward making them. On a
Saturday morning, we headed out to find the ingredients.
The recipe called for semi-sweet, bittersweet chocolate, and
crème fraîche. I found the chocolate at Williams Sonoma. All we had to do was
pop into a grocery store on the way home and get the crème fraîche. I figured
that in less than half an hour I would be elbow deep in chocolate, completely
relaxed. I was wrong.
We stood in front of
Jewel’s dairy isle in disbelief – there was no crème fraîche. Could they
be all out? Maybe it was in a different section, only I couldn’t fathom where
it could possibly be other than next to sour creams. I finally found a stock
boy and asked for help. But he looked at me as if I was an alien and directed
me to customer service.
“I
was wondering if you could help me find crème fraîche, please?” I said in the nicest possible way to a short rotund woman with large teased 80's hairstyle
behind the customer service desk.
“What,
honey? What are you looking for?” the woman replied.
“Crème
fraîche,” I repeated slowly.
“I
don’t know what that is, honey,” the woman said. I almost choked.
“It’s
a dairy. It’s kind of like a sour cream,” I said in disbelief.
“Oh…
Let me call the dairy manager then.” She paged the dairy manager and had a
small hushed discussion over the phone before turning back to me. I was slowly
starting to steam: no one calls me ‘honey’.
“He
said that we don’t carry that. He doesn’t even know what that is. It must be a
specialty item, you might want to try a gourmet foods store.” I could not
believe this, as far as I could remember I could get crème fraîche anywhere
when we lived on the North Shore. But then we moved to the Western Suburbs.
“Thanks,”
said I through clenched teeth and left the store. Our half an hour was wasted
and I was nowhere close to my truffles. We got into our car and the only
gourmet foods store Terry could think of in the vicinity was Whole Foods in
Wheaton, 30 minutes away.
There they were: little containers with hot pink lids. Crème
fraîche. It was next to sour creams, as it was supposed to be, and I bought more
than I needed. Whole Foods was nowhere near our house, I wasn’t planning on
returning. With my bounty safe and secure in our basket, we proceeded to check
out all the isles and grab everything else that might be considered “gourmet”
in this part of the world. ‘We moved to the freaking boonies…’ I thought as I
raided the isles, ‘how could you be a dairy manager and not know what crème
fraîche is?’ I still had a look of disgust on my face when we finally pulled
into our garage.
A couple of years later, Trader Joes opened a block away
from me. In their dairy isle, next to sour cream, stood a little tower crème
fraîche containers. Finally, I could call Batavia home.
Recently, Terry was out picking up a couple of items from
Jewel. I was cooking and realized I needed champagne vinegar. I texted him,
figuring that, by now, Jewel would have something like this. After a long
while, Terry texted me back: "It must be in the same isle as crème fraîche".