Article: Tennessee truffles
The black truffles of France and Italy are one of the most rare, and expensive, ingredients used in fancy American restaurants. In season, they can cost $50 an ounce.
They are gathered by foragers who use trained dogs and pigs to locate the underground fungus, which grows along tree roots. Despite attempts to grow them commercially, they have been a product of nature alone since the ancient Greeks attributed their creation to thunder booking across the sky.
But in the Blue Ridge Mountains, a guy named Tom Michaels has gotten ten years of work to pay off. In the woods outside Chuckey, Tenn., he's started harvesting and selling black Perigord truffles. Even Daniel Boulud says they're the real deal. GQ's Alan Richman has the story, and tries to explain truffles' lure:
They are not just pungent. They meld with certain foodstuffs, in particular fresh pasta, melted cheese, and runny eggs, enhancing their taste. They work well with vanilla ice cream, too. They are intoxicating. They weaken and captivate. All of us have at some time been desperately attracted to someone we knew was wrong. In the food world, that is the role of black truffles, although the only personal danger that results from coming under their spell is fiscal, not emotional.
If this hillbilly truffle thing catches on, how long will it take for them to get to the local produce market?
(Via.)
