Lay's Do Us A Flavor Pt 4: West Coast Truffle Fries

Up until this point, I've been relying on the blood, sweat, tears, elbow grease, creativity, and culinary expertise of others to complete this pairing masterpiece.  For this last entry, I was confident that my love of food (and familiarity with Truffle Fries) made it possible for me to carry this heavy load all by myself.

First of all, I'm not really sure what qualifies as "West Coast Truffle Fries".  I tried to gleam a little bit of understanding from the commentary from the conceptualist on the bag, but that yielded nothing.

Instead, I decided to simply use the picture on the FRONT of the bag to replicate what I needed.  Aside from the potatoes that I used to hand cut the fries, I had ALL of the ingredients readily available in my pantry to bust out some homemade fries.  Yes, Fat Mike keeps white truffle oil in his pantry. Granted, it's been there for some time because a little bit goes a LONG way, but until you've dressed a really nice Ahi tuna tartar in your own kitchen with some fresh chives and just a HINT of white truffle oil, you'll never truly know why I keep that stuff on hand.  As I've said in the past, Fat Mike loves food.

After Chase Utley decided to slide into Reuben Tejada during Game 3 of the NLDS playoff, I decided to indulge in some late night cooking and chip tasting.  Needless to say, I was a bit aggravated, but that just put me in the zone for some french fry making.  After soaking my potatoes, and a few rounds of frying, these bad boys emerged.

As you can see, they are a fair likeness to the expectation on the bag. The only missing ingredient was the parsley garnish sprinkled on top and that was only because I was too lazy to go grab some from my herb garden at 12m.  Besides, when it came down to it, I was sure that the parsley flavor wasn't going to make or break the chip tasting.  Because I had to fry in batches, the crispiness was reserved to the top layer of fries, and I used those first few bites to set the bar for the chip to follow. Not to do too much horn tooting, but I think I hit the nail on the head with this execution.  A good, deep fry, but not overdone.  A nice amount of truffle oil to keep the fries fragrant, but not overwhelming. And to finish it off, a toss with some salt and a healthy helping of Parmesan cheese.  Delicioso.  The west coast gots nothing on Fat Mike's East Coast Truffle Fries.

Aside from the fact that I figured I could prepare the fries myself, the other reason for leaving this selection for last was because I figured it would be the easiest to execute for Frito-Lay.  As I stated in the SB&G post, the foundation is solid. For crying out loud, how easy is it to replicate a potato based snack with a POTATO CHIP?!?!  At this point, all of the regular readers (hahaha!) should know about my aversion to ridged chips, so I won't go into that.  Besides, I understand that Frito-Lay wants to offer the masses different chip styles with the assortment of flavors. I will say, right out of the gate, that this chip could've easily been served kettle cooked.  The ridged vessel is unnecessary.
And that's all I have to say about that - Forrest Gump 

When the flavor titles were first released, my first thought was that this was a brave choice because if the flavor was well received by the masses, Frito-Lay will be shouldered with mass producing chips with truffle flavoring, which is NOT cheap.  So, I tipped my cap to them for showing the world that they have more money than God, and they're not afraid to spend it.  However, they came up with an ELEGANT solution to that problem.  The chips don't taste like truffle AT ALL!!  It was amazing. I took a chip, ate it, waited, figured I'd missed something, ate another one, waited, rinsed my mouth out with water, ate another one, and waited again, but I never got truffle.  Sure, I got something that tasted like parm and herbs, but not even a false mushroomy attempt at truffle.  I was shocked and disappointed.  Truffle is an elegant and FRAGRANT flavor, and the chips didn't even SMELL like truffle.  This is the closest I've ever felt to being deliberately deceived by Lay's.  This cut deep.  It was hurtful.  All I was left with was a mouth full of disappointment, a bag full of RIDGED chips, and a heart full of sadness.  Thankfully, there was a large batch of homemade truffle fries to wash down the pain.  I felt like a million bucks in the A.M.

Since this is part 4, I'll wrap up with a summary:
No. 1 - Kettle Cooked Gyro - vibrant, delicious and well encompassing of all the flavors found in the Gyro.
No. 2 - Biscuits and Gravy - Better than NOT eating chips
No. 3 - NY Reuben - Unique in conception and rye flavor, but in no way replicant of a Reuben. Still...tastey.
No. 4 - West Coast Truffle Fries - I don't know what it's called, I just know the sound it makes when it LIES!! (if you haven't seen Tropic Thunder, remedy that immediately)

This was a GREAT experience.  Regardless of any lackluster reviews, I will ALWAYS tip my cap to the folks at Frito-Lay for putting themselves out there and taking a chance with consumers.  There's always a "weird" flavor in there that makes them look like weirdos, but I appreciate them for the pioneers that they truly are.  I will never paint Frito-Lay with a broad ugly brush by saying that they're losing their touch.  As A Tribe Called Quest once said, "You get and 'E' for effort, and 'T' for nice try" this year, but I'm sure that feedback like this helps to focus your energies and crank out some real gems for DUAF 2016!! Keep 'em coming, Lay's, you got it going on!