[Sca-cooks] truffles

[Stefan li Rous]

Cadoc commented:
> Yeah, that's only part of the real story.  The only problem with
> the truffle is that it is unfit for human consumption  They gave
> the truffle back to the folks they bought it from and they buried
> it near where it was found.  Apparently when truffles go bad,
> they are goin to seed to make new truffles.  So they are hoping
> it will seed an even bigger batch of truffles for nxt year.
>
> The restaraunt was compensated with an equivalent weight
> in smaller truffles though.
Thank you for the clarification. So what was the problem? Putting the 
truffles in the refrigerator? Or waiting too long to prepare them? 
Either way, it makes me wonder whether this is something the chef 
should have known and if so, whether he is one who should have been 
entrusted with cooking such an expensive treat. If he can't store it 
properly, can he cook it properly? But then, some folks seem to have 
too much money so I'm not going to cry for them and their misfortune.

I did wonder about this burying of the truffle and hoping for more 
truffles next year. I'd heard that truffle farming couldn't be done. So 
I plugged "truffle farming" into Google and got lots of interesting 
hits.

The farming seems to get a big push from selling oak and other trees, 
whose roots are already impregnated with the fungus. You can even buy 
these off of the Internet. So, you could even start this as your next 
A&S project. :-) But you aren't going to get any truffles by next year, 
and I suspect neither are those folks who took the big "rotten" truffle 
back. Apparently it takes a number of years to produce edible sized 
ones and is somewhat hit and miss.

Here is one interesting blurb I found at:
http://iafrica.com/highlife/kitchenlife/features/208099.htm
>  Though no-one has exact figures, French truffle production is said to 
> have plummeted from 2000 tons a century ago to 20 tons today, a ton of 
> which is produced in this region of Correze. The fall was due to wars, 
> to the rural exodus and to farming reform.
>
>  So for now France imports two-thirds of its truffles from Italy and 
> Spain.
>
>  But it takes between 10 to 25 years for the first truffles to pop up 
> near the roots of newly-planted oak and hazel trees that host the 
> fungus.
>
>  "Truffle farming is a long process and there are no guarantees," said 
> Albert Verlhac, who runs the centre. "Only 30 percent of the trees 
> produce mushrooms." And traders complain that apart from the great 
> chefs, the French buy less and less truffles, largely because of the 
> price.
>
>  "Which is ridiculous when you think about it," said Mas the village 
> mayor. "Take pepper which is twice as expensive per kilo or saffron at 
> about €3000 a kilogram, and compare.
>
>  "You only need a few grams of truffle, you know, to entirely change 
> the flavour of a dish."

Stefan
(And yes, there is a small Florilegium file. See truffles-msg in the 
PLANTS, HERBS AND SPICES section. More material on the web, though)
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****