Truffles - An Italian Gourmet Treat
Autumn is the Season for Truffle Hunting
They are, weight for weight, one of the most expensive foods in the world. People commit crimes to possess them, top chefs love to use them and they are even said to have aphrodisiac qualities. What are they? Truffles, of course.
Specialist Truffle Hounds
These gourmet delicacies, celebrated in various food festivals, are the fruiting bodies of fungi and grow underground as tubers, generally in woodland. Pliny is said to have called them: ‘callosities of earth’. Autumn is prime time for truffle hunting and, as Patrick Harding explains in his fascinating book Mushroom Miscellany (Collins, £14.99), truffle hunters use a variety of methods to seek them out. In some parts of France pigs are employed – sows to be precise, as the smell of truffles is apparently similar to the smell of a boar who is – how can we put this politely? – in the mood for love. However, pigs have a habit of eating the truffles they find, so in other parts of France and in Italy, dogs are used instead. In fact, although many breeds are able to sniff out truffles, the Italians have bred a dog especially for truffle hunting: a lagotto romagnolo. This is an ancient type of dog, originally bred for retrieving waterfowl that had been shot. In the 19th-century they began to be used for sniffing out truffles and the tradition continues today.
Italian White Truffles
There are two types of edible truffle that are particularly highly prized. The most valuable of all is the white truffle, which grows in central and northern Italy. They have a fairly short harvesting season, around October to December. It was a huge specimen (850g) of this type of truffle which was sold to a restaurant for £28,000 a few years ago in London. A specimen that, as Patrick Harding reminds us in Mushroom Miscellany, then went off in the fridge while the head chef was on holiday.
Black Diamonds
The other truffle prized for its culinary qualities is the black truffle, which grows more widely – in Spain, Portugal and southern France as well as Italy. Known as black diamonds, they are more plentiful and have a longer season than white truffles and can be found from November until early March. While white truffles cannot be farmed, the black variety can – which partly explains the difference in price.
The World's Most Expensive Dessert
In Italy, truffle shavings will typically be used to flavour a rich risotto (a little truffle goes a long way). However in New York, according to Mushroom Miscellany, a restaurant came up with an entirely new culinary use for them. A chef created a dessert which combined shavings of real gold and truffles with chocolate and cream. At $25,000 it was declared the world’s most expensive dessert. The allure of truffles will drive gourmets to spend almost anything, it seems.
Here's a recipe for Beef Fillet with Black Truffles
Pigs can be used for Truffle Hunting
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