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veggie
Reged: 07/25/04
Posts: 6485
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Harvest of luxury [CAN]
03/21/07 10:14 PM
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March 21, 2007 - canada.com
Harvest of luxuryHarvest of luxury
Truffles, one of the rarest and most expensive foods in the world, could soon be growing here in B.C., making us even more a land of plenty
Truffles are the Marilyn Monroe of foods, triggering copious salivating among certain fans.
 On the other hand, they are fungi covered in dirt and on a bad day, can look like ape knuckles.
They have co-dependent relations with tree roots, trading water and minerals for life-giving sugars from the tree. Weirdest of all, you must find truffles by nose, not by sight. Truffles, meeker than mushrooms, prefer a subterranean life, relying on animals to spread their spores.
Thus, their powerful scent, all the better for animals to dig and eat and spread through their scat. For humans, the best GPS for locating truffles is the keen-nosed pig or dog.
Yet, the earthy truffle is a luxury food in the same class as caviar and champagne. Traditionally, the highest pedigreed truffles -- black Perigords and white Albas -- come from France and Italy and sell for more than $1,000 and $3,000 a pound, fluctuating with supply and demand. Order pasta with paper-thin shavings of white Alba truffles drifting on the surface and you're looking at a $60 penne, minimum.
But now, B.C. is on the cusp of producing these tuberous divas as a food crop. It fits right into the enviro-friendly 100-Mile Diet philosophy as well as the growing culinary and agro-tourism industry. The spawn of France's Perigords have been implanted in B.C. trees and the due date is about three years from now. It takes five to 10 years to mature and the first truffieres (truffle farmers) started operating two years ago.
High-end chefs like David Hawksworth can't wait for B.C. truffles. As a chef, he loves its umami, considered to be the fifth sense.
"It's that aroma and mystique. You can't quite put your finger on it. It adds something. It's great with pastas. It's beautiful with eggs and halibut and white fish or anything mild. It's a shame we have to wait. It's very exciting. There's a lot of people doing the culinary tourism thing and they'll be blown away when we say the truffles are from the Comox Valley, the potatoes are from Pemberton and the fish is from the Queen Charlottes."
Though traditionally foraged in the wild, truffles are now being cultivated in Europe and to a small extent, in New Zealand and Australia.
In the U.S., the first commercial crop was recently harvested in Tennessee and passed the nose test at New York's two-Michelin star Boulud, where French owner and chef Daniel Boulud declared: "This is it! The first time in America! This Tennessee truffle is the real thing."
B.C.'s half dozen pioneering truffieres planted hazelnut trees inoculated with Perigord spores. In the Pacific Northwest, the technology was developed by Charles Lefevre of New World Truffles in Eugene, Ore. To bypass exporting complexities, he partnered with Oyama Gardens owners, Quentin and Catherine Wyne of Oyama, B.C., who will be selling inoculated trees in Canada.
"To produce these trees, you need to develop a method and you can't go out and read a book. It's a very tightly held and valuable secret. The world of truffles is famously secretive," says Lefevre, who has a PhD in mycology (the study of fungi).
The industry, he says, is poised to become viable and strong. "It's at the same sort of risk stage as the wine industry when it began. There was uncertainty about the soils, the climate and nobody really knew. It took time to show results. It's the same with truffles."
The Fraser Valley, Southern Vancouver Island and parts of the Okanagan are good truffle-growing regions. Abbotsford, he says, is the best spot in Canada for black truffles which grow wherever red wine grapes can grow, especially pinot noir grapes. No one has successfully cultivated the most coveted white Alba truffles yet but less-coveted truffles, like the Burgundy and Bianchatta truffles can grow here.
The Wynes planted 150 inoculated hazelnut trees two years ago and expect to have Perigord truffles in about three years. Like a pregnant woman, the trees are tested along the way. "They were tested at the molecular level to confirm the DNA on the root system was right. It's all in a concerted effort to make sure the industry has a high standard, right from the outset," says Quentin Wyne. He describes the allure and aroma of the Perigord as "somewhat garlicky, somewhat like the smell of freshly burnt soil after rainfall." Others, he says, have different impressions. "You wouldn't want to print those," he says, clamming up.
He likes to have Perigords in risotto, egg dishes and pasta. Like Marilyn, truffles need the limelight. The backdrop must be mild and subdued. The aromatics are so strong, if you put a truffle into an egg carton with fresh eggs, the eggs will taste of truffles.
Abbotsford truffiere Bill Stewart has planted 600 inoculated hazelnut trees, choosing them over oak because they mature more quickly. Oaks, however, keep producing longer. "My grandkids might appreciate it," he says, on his plan to add some oaks.
When reached at 8 p.m., he's still working, filling pots with soil. "I was looking for something that didn't require heavy equipment and something different," he says about his risky venture. "I checked into truffles and kept on going." He avoided traditional crops because his small farm couldn't compete with produce coming in from the big farms in California.
Once planted, the job of a truffiere is remarkably simple. "Everything happens below ground," says Wyne, who previously worked in the field of government-corporate relations and jokes about requiring Kevlar underwear in that job.
"The labour involves maintaining the orchard, cutting the grass, weeding, pruning to allow the heat and sun in to the soil and irrigating. It's pest-free and organic other than the initial soil amendment with crushed limestone which is inert." The trees grow on marginal soils, unusable for other crops he says.
"The last time I looked on the Internet, distributors from Europe were selling these truffles for $2,700 US a pound which would fit into a bread bag."
The demand from chefs will certainly be strong. Lefevre knows the Tennessee farmer who produced the first American-raised Perigords. "He called me, very excited. He was charging $800 a pound for the 150 pound harvest and was driving to Nashville to sell them where the sophisticated restaurants are but he didn't make it past Knoxville, not an affluent town. He sold everything to the chefs there." News reports cited his first crop to be worth at least $122,000.
"It'll be lucrative if all goes well," says Wyne.
Unlike the secretive, underground wild truffle-selling culture in France and Italy, the truffle business will be more modern and open in B.C., he says. "In France, they have the odd tradition where the seller places the truffles on a table and the buyer can't touch it. The placement can hide damage and deterioration so it's a delicate balance of maintaining his reputation as a collector [forager] and seller and trying to get as high a price as he can. Here, the truffles will be fresh, there will be no substitutes."
By that he's referring to the Chinese truffle which looks just like the Perigord only lacks the powerful aroma. Sellers sometimes mix the two and the Chinese truffle takes up the Perigord's aroma.
South of us, the state of Oregon is trumpeting the truffle although none have yet fruited. Truffle aficionados began a truffle festival two years ago showcasing the fungus and familiarizing palates with the real thing. Often, truffled foods are treated with synthetic aromas. "It's like quartz for diamonds," says Lefevre. "The Perigord truffle compound is easy to synthesize."
Thus far, truffieres tend to be doing it for the lifestyle rather than for fast, big bucks. "They're like the people who pioneered the wine industry. There's an uncertainty that keeps people from jumping in."
There may be more truffieres in B.C. than accounted for. Once producing, there's a goldmine under those trees and the best security is to keep it a secret. In 20 years, Lefevre says, truffle yields in B.C. will be measured by the tonnes.
TRUFFLE TRIVIA
- Truffles live in the root system of some broad-leafed trees, primarily hazelnuts, oaks, lindens, and willows. The symbiotic relationship is called mycorrhiza.
- When the truffle starts to mature, a "brulee" or scorched-looking area appears at the base of a tree, indicating where the truffles have been storing the soil's nutrients. Truffles are found at the outer edge of this brulee circle. Ripeness is indicated by aroma, not by size.
- Truffles require hot, dry summers with occasional thundershowers and mild winters. In Canada, some parts of southern B.C. and southern tip of the Niagara Peninsula are truffle-friendly territory.
- The gourmet species grow wild in France, Italy, Spain. Lesser grades are found in China, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Northern Africa and the U.S. There are some 70 varieties of edible truffles, but the gourmet variety is the white truffle (tuber magnatum) and the black winter truffle (tuber melanosporum) and to lesser extent, the summer truffle (tuber aestivum), which is used most often as a base for truffle products.
- Cultivated trees can produce truffles for up to 30 years, whereas in the wild, they could produce for up to 80 years.
- Because the truffle fungus doesn't compete well with other fungi, truffieres have to provide optimum site selection, soil, heat and water conditions for them to thrive.
- Truffles rely on animals to eat them and spread their spores in their fecal matter. They're usually found one to six inches deep in the soil.
- Some truffles mimic the male pig sex hormone, which is why female pigs have historically been used in Europe to hunt truffles. Dogs are now preferred as they're less likely to eat them and are easier to handle.
- Ideally, truffles should be used as fresh as possible, but they can be stored for several days in a paper bag in the fridge or frozen in a glass jar, or for a limited period, immersed in olive oil so the oil will absorb the flavour. Although it's often said that truffles should be stored in arborio rice and that the rice should then be used for risotto, it's not a good idea. The rice doesn't absorb the aroma well and dries the truffle.
- A good quality for a truffle-hunting dog is to have paws that aren't turned too far in or out, so they can dig with the pads without breaking too much of the ground and disturbing the subterranean structure.
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