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| Brett Graham's version of Chicken in Half Mourning with Manjimup Truffles stuffed under and over its skin |
Where do the world’s best truffles come from? For the past century or more, the stock response has been Périgord (France) for black ones and Piedmont (Italy) for the rarer white variety. It wasn’t always so. In the Ancient World, these sources were unknown and the Roman poet Juvenal declared “Libyans – unyolk your cattle, keep your harvests but send us your truffles.”
Truffles were first mentioned by the early Egyptians and in Ancient Greece, a resident alien was granted citizenship in return for a dish of truffles. Their origins were always difficult to comprehend with some ancients believing they were mud cooked by lightning. In fact, they are a type of fungus that latches onto the roots of certain trees and in return for nourishment, offer the tree an assortment of minerals. They are spread by attracting animals, who then scatter their spores when they unearth them.
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| Perigord Truffles |
Truffles have long been associated with luxury and decadence. In fact, the French writer Alexandre Dumas claimed “it awakens erotic and gourmand memories ..and not a positive aphrodisiac, but in certain circumstances it can make women more tender, and men more amiable”. Mrs. Beeton was more circumspect about such qualities in her 1861 classic on Household Management: “however, they have many virtues attributed to them which they do not possess. Their wholesomeness is, perhaps, questionable, and they should be eaten with moderation.”
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| Truffle broker Bruno Giorgi at a White Truffle charity auction in London |
Perhaps this explains why the price of a kilogram of Périgord truffles is more than £1200 a kilo, while white truffles can command prices five times that. White truffles, Tuber magnatum pico, are far rarer and unlike the various black varieties, cannot be farmed. Their odour is more intense than their taste and for many, is reminscent of a sexually aroused female, which might explain why pigs go into a frenzy of excitement when their snouts are close to them. Every year, some Italian white truffle hunters lose some fingers to excited swine, which is why most have switched to using truffle dogs, or Lagotto Romagnola, which are adorable creatures that look like small poodles.
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| A Lagotto Romagnola or truffle dog |
Most chefs prefer black over white ruffles as they are more robust in cooking, whereas white truffles are best simply shaved over pasta or scrambled eggs. Brett Graham of The Ledbury in Notting Hill says “I personally prefer the flavour of black over white truffles. Also, unless the whites are absolutely spot on, I find it very difficult to pass on a £40 or £50 supplement to my customers for using them, which is what it costs if they are £4000 a kilo.”
Now a serious black truffle contender has emerged from the New World. For the past three years, a remote farm in Western Australia, has produced black truffles that renowned chefs consider equal or even superior to the best Europe can offer. They are exactly the same species – the tuber melanosporum – and originated from tree roots inoculated with the Perigord variety.
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| White Truffles with Risotto |
Can this really be true? After all, there are a handful of other luxury consumables such as Champagne, Havana Cigars and Caspian Caviar where rival products from elsewhere may approach but never surpass the originals. Another difficulty in deciding the validity of the claim is that it is impossible to physically compare Old vs. New World truffles as they are at their peak at opposite times of the year. High season for southern hemisphere truffles is from early June until September. (Making the journey from halfway around the world isn’t a problem as most experts believe that the peak flavour is between four and 11 days after harvesting.)
The 50-acre farm at Manjimup at the extreme south western tip of Australia, expects to produce five tons of the “Black Diamonds” this season and to export 95% of them, mostly to Asia, the USA and Britain.
Shane Styles, the vice president of marketing for the Truffle & Wine Company, said it was only in 2011 that “we realised from the feedback from leading chefs around the world that we had a world class product. There are parts of our paddock are still producing less than others and we rotate production and give some sections a rest before moving on to other parts of the paddock.”
One of the biggest pests in Europe is the brumale species of black truffle which is hard to pick when put against a conventional truffle. However, they are virtually tasteless, so some unscrupulous dealers mix a few in with genuine truffles to con the consumer. They also exist in Australia, but not in West Australia, according to Styles.
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| superb White Truffles from Bruno |
“The brumales is widespread on the east coast and Tasmania because they didn’t do adequate research to check that the inoculated trees they used were pure. We actually used the resources of the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Reseacrh Organisation) and as a consequence, there is no known presence anywhere in WA of brumales. The ideal conditions we have are the soil and the overall climate – it is hot at the right time and it rains at the right time – the climatic conditions have just proven perfect for truffle growing. There are other farms here that produce very good ones. We have a 168-acre farm with about 50 acres under truffle cultivation with 13,000 trees (11,000 hazelnut and 2,000 oak).
There are 150 truffle farms across Australia but a lot are not producing. It is very difficult and expensive to grow a successful crop of truffles. There is one 12 year old farm I know that has hardly produced one. Our trees produced after seven years and serious production occurred after 12 years. The first real commercial harvest was only 2010 and it has grown substantially since then.”
Truffle & Wine use Labradors to search for them: “It is like training a sniffer dog with recognition and reward. They are found down to 6 – 8 inches underground but on average are about 2-3 inches below soil and as you get further into the season, they are found deeper.”
Curiously, just like in the case of Turbot, it is not true that the very freshest truffles are necessarily the most intensely flavoured or perfumed. According to Styles, “The optimum flavour is between 4 and 11 days. After cleaning and drying, it takes a couple of days for the aromas to settle down and the aromas are strongest between 4 to 11 days – research in Germany has found the same thing.” Truffle & Wine employ up to 30 people during the peak season in July, when they take out more than 500 kilos a week. “In the middle of July, there is a peak, where production goes mad, so we actually flash freeze some.”
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| The Ledbury's Truffles on Toast |
The first chef in Britain to offer them on his menu is Brett Graham, the Australian-born chef of The Ledbury in London’s Notting Hill. Regularly voted the leading restaurant in Britain and with two Michelin stars, Graham says he would say “the quality of Australian truffles is definitely as good as the French. I don’t normally give Australia compliments like that, even though I am expected to”. I was thinking the other day that virtually everything we use here is British except for the peaches from France, so why would we import something from Australia? Then I thought that we actually sell imported Australian wine, which weighs a kilo a bottle for a table of two, so what is wrong with using a kilo of Australian truffles that will serve 40 or 50 tables or even more?
The biggest supporter of them in the USA is Thomas Keller, chef of two of the most famous restaurants in the country – The French Laundry in California and Per Se in New York. Matthew Orlando, his former sous chef, who now runs Amass in Copenhagen, has no doubts: “In black truffle terms, they are definitely the best as essentially they are the same species. If you are using them in a recipe, you can’t tell the difference. In fact, I almost find them a bit more fruity than Périgord truffles, so in cooking terms, they are actually a bit more exciting to cook with.”
My first encounter with them was three years ago, when I ate The Ledbury’s truffle toast with Saint Nectaire cheese. The intensity of the truffles was extraordinary, especially as they were supposed to be out of season in the London summer. Brett, like most high end chefs, is a big fan. “The thing about truffles is their amazing flavour when they are at their best. Its only for six or eight weeks of the year that they re real at their best and you look forward to it – I look forward to truffles as much as I do for the asparagus season or the first Jerusalem artichoke because I haven’t seen them for so long.
They work so well with so many dishes - they work wonderfully with artichokes, root vegetables, all the way through to sweet corn and peas. Traditionally you wouldn’t serve such a dish unless it was with summer truffles, which are not so strong. However I think that sweet corn and truffles is an amazing combination. They are one of my favourite ingredients probably because of the strength of the flavour and very complimentary to lots of ingredients.”
Just before this year’s Wimbledon championships, Brett Graham created an entire menu of truffle dishes from Western Australia to demonstrate that the quality of his toast was not a fluke.
It was a tour-de-force, starting with a Scottish langoustine wrapped in black truffles and shitake, the signature dish of truffle toast plus semolina dumplings with shaved truffles.
However, the dish of the night was a Black Leg Chicken “in Mourning”, which refers to the colour caused by black truffles being inserted under its skin. With demonstrations like this, it is small wonder that the price for the very best Australian truffles is now approaching £1000 a kilo.
Britain has long had a number of truffle species and certain farmers are now attempting to produce them in commercial quantities. There are also a small number of truffle hunters who seek out the wild variety, using properly trained Lagotto Italian truffle dogs, which look like hairier versions of poodles. Tom Lywood is one of the better known truffle hunters in the West Country of England and he invited me to accompany him to one of his secret destinations for wild truffles.
Blindfolded and led into a 4x4 with a charming Lagotto called Brenda, half an hour later I was led into a wood where there were said to be a bountiful supply of wild truffles. Sure enough, within ten minutes, Brenda was wagging her tail and pawing at the exposed roots of an oak tree to uncover the miniature treasure of a small black truffle. The location was in a wood in Somerset on a large estate owned by a well-known aristocrat. The secrecy could be explained as being partly because the owner of the hound didn’t want his location to be rumbled and, I suspect, because he had no right to be there in the first place.
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| Perigord Truffles on mashed potato |
Later we shaved them onto scrambled eggs but unfortunately the intensity of English truffles is not nearly as intense as the best French or Italian ones. Brett Graham is happy to use them, but thinks “if you compare them to French or Australian truffles, they are in a different league and a tenth of a price. They have a gentle button mushroom flavour, so they do have a place as decoration or in light salads.”
Already, the Truffle & Wine Company boast of being the single largest producer on Périgord-style truffles on the planet, so is it just a matter of time before gourmets consider the black diamonds from Manjimup to be the equal of those from Périgord?
http://truffleandwine.com.au
This is an expanded version of a story that first appeared in Newsweek International
http://www.newsweek.com/2014/07/11/aussie-truffles-knock-french-varieties-top-spot-259109.html
Good Books on the Subject:
Taming the Truffle by Ian Hall, Gordon Brown (no, you fool, not the PM) and Alessandra Zambonelli (London, 2010)
Truffles by Elizabeth Luard (London, 2006)
Le Grand Livre de Truffle by Pierre-Jean and Jacques Pebeyre (Paris, 1988)
There is also an excellent three part series by David Downie on Black and white Truffles
http://blog.davidddownie.com/2011/03/truffles-in-black-and-white-part-one.html