Truffle tutorial

WHITE truffles (Tuber magnatum pico) are tubers that grow mostly in Italy. They are sometimes called Alba truffles because they are particularly abundant in this area, which lies in the country’s famed Piedmont region that is also home to Italy’s best-known red wines. 

White truffles can also be found – in much smaller quantities – in some parts of central Italy as well as the south of France. 

Kilo for kilo, the tuber is the second most expensive food in the world, after caviar. One reason why this is so is that it can’t be cultivated.  

Its pleasantly fragrant aroma, different from that of other truffles (such as the black ones), makes it unique. It lives in symbiosis with oaks, limes, poplars and willows and is seldom found together with other truffles. 

The trifolau, as the truffle hunter is called, is the most sought-after person from about late October to December when white truffle season induces desperate gourmets to flood the Piedmont in search of the delicacy. 

The trifolaus have, for centuries, used dogs to sniff out the wild tuber. These specially trained dogs, usually bred over several generations to develop especially sensitive noses, are so valuable they have even been kidnapped (er, dognapped?). 

The “insane prices” of white truffles, as one restaurateur put it in the May issue of National Geographic, also encourages trifolaus to be a secretive lot that tend to do their hunting at night and to dissemble wildly about there they’ve been and whether they found any truffles at all?. – albatartufi.com/ nationalgeographic.com