I’ll be the first to admit, I like fine dining. I love beautifully plated meals with multiple courses. I like the ambiance, the décor and the great service. Most importantly, I love the food. In my opinion, the most memorable restaurant meals are often those that are impressive, but yet understated. Where the food is thoughtful and delicious, but not fussy. Basically, I love gourmet food, but without a side of pretentiousness.
So when it comes to truffles, I’ve always felt like they fall into the fancy and pretentious category. You know the restaurants with the seemingly overpriced seasonal truffle menus. It’s not that I don’t want to eat truffles (I do!), but they always seemed so mysterious and out of reach. Like a pricey, time-sensitive topping. They don’t really show off the chef’s talent, do they? They are just shaved on top and jack up the bill at the end. You can opt for the prix fixe menu for $150 or the prix fixe menu with truffles for $450. Really?!!
But, really, what did I know?
So when planning a recent trip to the South of France, a well-known truffle-growing region, I decided to make the mysterious a bit less so and go truffle hunting. I truly didn’t know what to expect. Documentaries like The Truffle Hunter depict the art of truffle hunting as secretive and dangerous, where only elderly men and their dogs are able to unearth these prized tubers. After coming across a place called Les Pastras on Airbnb Experience, I ended up traveling to a farm outside of the super charming village of Lourmarin in the Vaucluse. Here I learned more about truffles first-hand than I could have ever imagined.
First off, I should mention that truffles are not eaten for nutritional value. While they do have some amino acids, vitamins and minerals, they are eaten in such small quantities that nutrition has nothing to do with their value. I think most truffle-lovers would say it’s about their unmistakable flavor and aroma and how they enhance the foods that are consumed with them.
It only makes sense that truffles are expensive because they are scarce, but why are they scarce? Truffles have very unique growing conditions, which are further complicated by global warming. It’s said that the cultivation of truffles will only be moving north as temperatures rise. Truffles have very specific requirements in terms of climate and soil. Plus, they must grow on the roots of a host tree, typically an oak. Unlike mushrooms, this type of fungus grows underground, making it difficult to find. That’s where the dogs come in. Challenging growing requirements coupled with a short shelf life make truffles scarce and expensive.
In fact, fresh truffles are so rare and so hard to find that it’s amazing that those of us living outside of truffle-growing regions are able to taste fresh truffles at all. The increased ability to quickly ship fresh ingredients like truffles globally has led to an increased demand of this delicacy. People want them because, at the right price, they can have them.
Les Pastras is more or less a truffle farm. Truffles can be farmed by inoculating the roots of saplings with truffle spores, planting them, then waiting about six to seven years (years! not months) for some of those trees to produce truffles. This allows truffles to grow more reliably within an area, but all of the right growing conditions must still be present. Just like any other crop, truffles become ready to harvest at a specific time, but unlike fruit and vegetables, the truffles’ readiness for harvest can not be visually assessed. Truffle growers rely on highly trained dogs to find and dig up truffles at their peak. At this point, they are fragrant and good to eat for a few days. That’s it.
On this tour I learned so much about how they train the dogs, how truffles grow and the inside scoop on the truffle business. However, the best of what I learned was about eating truffles. If you are going to shell out big bucks for truffles, you should be getting the real thing!
Truffle Eating Tips
Truffles should be served with fat and salt. Ideal food pairing for truffles include meat, pasta, eggs, rice, avocado, pizza and grilled cheese sandwiches.
Truffles should never be frozen or cooked. When ordering fresh truffles in a restaurant, the truffles should have white veins (see photo below). Truffles with no white veins that are heavy and soggy have very likely been pre-frozen.
The aroma should be intense and elegant, so if there is little to no aroma the truffles are likely too old. When ordering truffles, ask to smell the truffles first to verify freshness and quality.
Black truffles grow in the Northern Hemisphere between November to March. However, the best time to order fresh truffles is in January right after the higher demands (and prices) of the Christmas and New Year holiday truffle season die down.
When packaged foods like chips, cheese and truffle oil boast truffles, look for the terms “infused with truffles” not “natural flavors” to decipher whether the product does, in fact, contain real truffles.
Ninety percent of the truffle oil on the market contains no real truffle. When looking at the food labels of various truffle oils, I found many products containing both natural flavors and infused real truffle. This combination of real and fake truffles allows the product manufacturer to be able to use very little real truffle, while claiming the product contains truffle. Les Pastras sells a variety of authentic truffle products including truffle oil and truffle honey. They also offer a really cool Adopt-A-Tree program that allows customers to adopt a truffle oak tree on their farm to receive an annual shipment of black truffles.
