The first time truffles entered my consciousness, I wasn’t as excited as I should have been. My family was staying in the south of France, in St. Tropez, and we ordered dinner in one evening from a local traiteur, a sort of delicatessen that sold prepared meals.
I don’t remember much else of the meal, I believe there was a bird of some sort, but the roasted potatoes were the dish that caused my father to go into a strange fit, that in hindsight, I can understand. Mixed in with the potatoes and herbes de provence were chunks of what looked like browned, quartered water chestnuts. “Are those… Oh my gosh… girls!” my dad sputtered as we looked at him warily. “Girls, these are–are they?–yes they’re big pieces of truffles!”
Big deal, we thought, and ate them on our veranda overlooking the mediterranean. Over a decade later, I understand parents’ frustration with their teenagers’ ability to remain stubbornly unimpressed with absolutely everything.
Since then I’ve happily ordered dishes containing the precious fungus and even incorporated its perfume into my own cooking by use of truffle salts and truffle oils, but I’ve never worked with a real specimen myself. I’ve come close to buying jarred truffles, but balked at spending so much on a preserved version. Last week, in honor of the decadence of Valentine’s day, I finally ordered a fresh truffle from Italy through Aromi La Bottega’s online shop. I picked up my piece four days later, a 30 g bianchetto truffle for a little over 400 crowns.
Yes, it’s expensive, but not prohibitively so, and I knew one truffle would last us several dishes. I brought it home, excitedly opened the box, and thought, now what? At that point we had fresh pasta in the fridge, so we shaved a small amount of the truffle and tossed it with egg pasta, butter, pepper and grated parmesan.
There was no epiphany. I felt cheated, but it wasn’t the truffle’s fault, it was all my own doing. My brain’s truffle pleasure centers had been rewired and desensitized by years of using enhanced and often artificial truffle oils and other seasonings. It was akin, I suppose, to trying to appreciate the delicate scent of a violet after a lifetime of smelling only gardenias and lilacs.
Still, we carried on. The next night we placed much larger shavings of the truffle on a homemade pizza, topped simply with mozzarella, parmesan, pancetta and plenty of olive oil. You might view that as putting lipstick on a pig, but hey, I love pizza, and more importantly, it worked. I think a more liberal hand with the amount of truffle we used, and its time in a hot oven made for a stronger impression.
For our next act, I introduced my ever-shrinking truffle to my favorite dish–raw beef. Or, as it’s more elegantly referred to, beef tartare. I’m not sure what it says about me that raw meat is my preferred treat. There are several possibilities: I have the palate of a neanderthal, I’m a vampire, I find cooking tedious, or perhaps I’m just anemic. I bought a filet from Aromi, diced it, mixed in minced shallots, capers, an anchovy, olive oil, sea salt and cracked pepper and slivers of truffle, which had been gently cooked in olive oil beforehand.
This was hit or miss, in terms of truffle flavor to bite ratio. The dish wasn’t uniformly infused with its scent, but certain forkfuls hit those fungus notes beautifully.
The truffle’s grand finale came the next morning, and it was its finest hour. The whole week long, I’d kept an egg nestled next to the truffle in its case, as the general manager at Aromi had suggested.
I used this, two additional eggs, parmesan, a bit of eidam and an unmentionable amount of butter to make The World’s Best Omelet.
Would I do it again? Yes, without a doubt. But possessing a truffle can feel like a big responsibility. Their shelf-life is short, only five days, so to own a truffle is to feel the heavy hand of time and the transience of beautiful things. Each dinner became suddenly IMPORTANT, because it had to be worthy of the truffle’s sacrifice. I became anxious about whether my cooking would measure up.
It almost makes you think the best way to enjoy a truffle is to find it unexpectedly, in large quantity, chopped up into your delivered roast potatoes in St. Tropez. But I will humbly admit, that probably only happens once in a lifetime. Thank you, Dad!
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