'The diamond of the kitchen'

Delicacies can be confounding to those who are just beginning to explore gourmet and prized tastes. Consider what we celebrate in gastronomy: oysters, snails, digested coffee berries picked from animal feces (Kopi Luwak), thymus glands (sweetbreads), frog legs, diseased livers (foie gras) and fungus, specifically one grown underground and with the appearance to match.

Most of these are given delicate, often French, names that serve as euphemisms to help us better swallow our delicious medicines. And what name is cuter than "truffle?" Say it out loud, "truffe" in French, and pay attention to the petulant shape your lips take and the breathy, seductive sound. Now look at what the name describes: a misshapen dirty lump that's been rooted out of the ground, most often by sows and sometimes trained dogs, and has perfume with notes of garlic, potato skins, dirt and something altogether chemical.

"Sometimes, when the truffle is very strong, you can smell a note of gas," admits Kateřina Balandina, manager at Aromi La Bottega. Don't worry, that's not a euphemism for a sulphuric note; the smell she refers to is the same you'd encounter from your gas stove.

"Some people get scared off a bit from that," she says.

Whatever that percentage of the population is, it's a small one. Aromi La Bottega and its associated Italian restaurants La Finestra and Aromi collectively go through an average of one kilo of truffles per week, Balandina said. That's a huge amount given the fungus' potent flavor.

Only shavings are needed to infuse a dish with the truffle's perfume, a blessing given its price. The cost of the truffle depends on the variety, and white are more expensive than black. The store is currently offering a variety that's in season from January to April called the Bianchetto truffle (tuber albidum) for 13,000 Kč per kilo, but you can make off with a 30-gram truffle for just over 400 Kč, as this writer did last week.

Truffles rarely come in big proportions, and when they do, it makes news and can ratchet up the price to exorbitant levels. The largest white truffle found in decades, by Luciano Savini and his dog Rocco, weighed 1.5 kilos (3.3 lbs) and was bought for a record price of $330,000 in 2007 by Macau casino owner Stanley Ho.

DIY gourmet

For all their glamour and cache, truffles are remarkably easy to cook with and are therefore a surprisingly easy way to sex up home cooking. To highlight and savor its scent, truffles match beautifully with seemingly bland foods like rice, potatoes and eggs. There's a reason truffled french fries are so widespread and popular, and restaurants will often serve shavings on top of fresh pasta and butter, with little else.

"You can make a wonderful risotto with black truffle," Balandina says. At Aromi, "we use truffles for a lot of egg dishes. You can prepare wonderful antipastas, prepare it with salads and pastas; you can use truffles for a lot of things."

Balandina offers an unusual way to flavor a dish: Place a truffle in a container with an egg, and let it sit in the refrigerator for a few days. The egg will absorb the truffle's aroma, and you can prepare it however you like. Truffles even pair with sweets, she adds, a use to which anyone who has sampled a chocolate black truffle cake at Finestra can attest.

Whatever the use, a little goes a long way, making the economics of fresh truffles more reasonable than it would seem at first glance. The downside is the truffle's brief shelf life. A fresh truffle will not keep much past five days wrapped in paper towels in the refrigerator, given its moisture content. With this limit, a truffle is best used enthusiastically and perhaps with a couple of your most treasured friends. The truffle does not need to be fussy; it can be added to whatever dish you wish, and pairs with a variety of wines, Balandina says.

"Pairing a wine with a truffle dish is greatly dependant on personal taste, and the particular type of dish prepared, and what kind of truffle product you are using," she says.

Faking it

Truffle butter, salt and infused oils can be bought at even the supermarkets or Marks & Spencer these days, but chances are, it hasn't been blessed with the real fungus. With the growing demand from restaurants who want to add panache to dishes, and customers who expect the flavor of truffle to knock their socks off, most oils are created with chemical compounds, most commonly 2.4-dithiapentane. It's cheaper and stronger. The sad thing is my first experience with real, shaved truffles seemed wan in comparison with the aggressive flavors I'd previously experienced as "truffle," and I suspect it would be the same with many diners. The trick is to try to step back: Buy a real truffle, make several dishes with it, and quietly learn to taste the real thing, in all its delicate complexity.

Claire Compton can be reached at
ccompton@praguepost.com