TUBERIS MELANOSPORUM

The words, black truffle or truffe, in French, appear far too easily on many menus around the world. I wish I had a dollar for every time I have seen the word truffle on a menu only to be belted in the face by the overpowering offensive aroma of truffle oil when the plate reaches the table. By the time I take the first bite, my palate is ready to jump off a cliff. I have always associated the aroma of truffle oil with the smell of tyres.

These days it is possible to experience this same truffle con in your own home. There are some big name products on the market that are trading off the luxury image of the truffle, with products like truffle butter, oil, salt, flour etc. There is a place for some of these products but beware. What are you really getting for your money? Check the ingredient list before you buy and look out for flavour enhancers and the excessive use of salt.

I was a Chef de Partie at the Hotel Goerge V in Paris in 1999-2000. I was in charge of the Garde Manger section of the kitchen, and in the season we were processing about 60kg of Périgord truffles per week, for the fine dining restaurant which was the 3 Michelin starred Le Cinq. The truffles were wheeled into the kitchen in wooden crates on a trolley and firstly they were scrubbed with nail brushes under cold running water by commis chefs, to get all the dirt off them. Then they were sorted according to quality and size. Mostly they were preserved, to be used in sauces and dressings throughout the year. The nice big, high quality truffles were used fresh, in various dishes as well as in the truffle dégustation menu that the restaurant was offering for 190 EURO per person.

Madame Rothschild had lunch with us at least twice a week at this time and often her party would have the truffle menu. She really put us in the weeds sometimes; eight or ten of them would have this menu during lunch when the service was already very fast and the truffles had to be trimmed, yes trimmed to be perfectly round, even at 2000 odd euro per kilo, and then sliced and weighed to the exact gram for each of the dishes. The standard weight for the first course which was a salad ,was 20 grams but the chef would always ask us for 45 grams for this course and so on for each of the courses when it was for the Madame. The guys and I referred to her as the truffle pig. We also had to prepare something for her dog and for her driver. We even had a silver dog dish that we used to serve up a sweetbread and wild mushroom terrine or something like that in. The driver of course did not sit in the restaurant. I recall many instances when the chef would scream himself a few breathes closer to his next heart attack because Madame Rothschild was in for lunch, but at Christmas when all 76 chefs, working in the hotel, received an 80 euro tip from her, things didn’t seem so bad.

Truffles are expensive, but you shouldn’t have to be Madame Rothschild to be able to get a real and true truffle experience for your money, especially now that Australia has its very own truffle growing industry. As we have seen in the media lately, many producers are based right here in the Canberra region. Truffles are expensive because they are a unique culinary ingredient, there is nothing else with which they can be compared and their use dates back to the ancient Egyptians. Truffles are also rare in the wild, the season is short and supply is inconsistent. They have only been successfully cultivated in the last decade or so. Before 1914 the Périgord region in France was producing more than 1700 tonne per season, these days the whole of France only produces about 200 tonne per year. This is a result of deforestation and pollution. Truffle prices are basically a demand and supply issue. Now that we are harvesting at opposite times of the year to the European season, truffles have become, like oil, an international year round commodity, not just a European speciality. Combine this wilting of supply in Europe with the emerging wealth and markets in Asia and I do not see the price of truffles dropping dramatically in the near future, even as new growers down under come on line.

I think that the Australian truffle industry needs to market its product locally in a much more user friendly manner. Even seasoned chefs that I know are hesitant to use these black pearls. This is because when you are paying over $2000 per kg for them, and you have limited experience with them, they can be intimidating. The retail market is relatively inexperienced with truffles, and people have very high expectations of truffles because of the mystique which surrounds them, and of course because of the price that they pay for them. This means that often people feel disappointed when they try them for the first time, especially if they only experience one of these nasty truffle by products. People can be further alienated by the fact that some chefs feel the need to over complicate plates, to justify the price that they are charging. If I hear the term molecular gastronomy one more time I think that I will throw up, and not on a molecular level.

Truffles are not cheap and they will always be a specialty ingredient, but they can still be accessible to the man in the street, even if only on special occasions. They will not change your life, they are only a fungus, they are however unique, interesting and intense, some people will like them, and some people won’t. My advice to chefs is to keep it simple, there was a time when truffles were peasant food. In Paris we would serve raw, sliced truffle, and a lot of it, on toast, in the lounge bar for vip’s. The main course in the dégustation menu was one single 45g truffle cooked en papilloté. My advice to the industry is to stop marketing them down your nose at people.

There are two types of truffle eaters, those that think truffles are good because they are dear, and those who know that they are dear because they are good. If you want to know which one you are, or you just want to see what all the fuss is about, go and see Wayne Haslam at Blue Frog, just up the Federal Highway in Sutton (bluefrog@dickson.st). Get 20g to 30g of fresh truffle from him, this will cost you around $50. It will be enough for a fantastic truffled scrambled egg brunch, for you and a few friends. If this sounds like a plug that’s because it is, Wayne and I have a mutual friend and upon hearing of my enthusiasm for these little fungi, he was kind enough to invite me out to his farm to watch his dogs at work hunting for truffles. I have never experienced this end of the process and I thoroughly enjoyed the morning, especially when I think that I had to come all the way home to Australia, to watch a dog digging a truffle out of the ground. I also believe that people should try the real thing, the way it is meant to be, before they spend a lot of money on poor substitutes.

Leave the truffle in an airtight container, in the fridge with some good free range eggs for 3-7 days. Simply scramble these eggs as you like them and serve them on good crusty buttered sourdough toast. Sprinkle with the truffle sliced as thinly as you can, at the last moment.