Truffles and other sins

Why must they be tubers?

By Ann Hodgman

June 8, 2000 | Don't you hate truffles? Oh, no, wait -- I forgot. You probably like them. Everyone does except me.

I'm not talking about candy truffles. I'm talking about the expensive tuberous kind, both black and white. The kind that grow underground and that dogs and pigs are trained to sniff out. (Pigs like truffles: big recommendation.) The kind that flavor pâté and get shaved onto risotto and stuffed under chicken skin and sliced into salads, and that enthusiasts tend to describe in the overwrought, give-me-a-break language that's normally used only to describe desserts with names like Chocolate Death. Heady ... intoxicating ... divinely musky -- who knew there were so many synonyms for stinky?

Push people a tiny bit, though, and chinks appear in the armor. "The ones that smell like feet are the best," says one of my friends. "I like them, but I'd rather have the money," says another. From a third: "I had white truffle risotto before knowing what a truffle looked like, and I was in heaven. The only thing that makes me feel as if I'm being duped into buying some sort of fragrant petrified sponge is when I realize that I have no idea if the truffle I get from the gourmet shop is really any good -- or at least better than the other ones. Are the harder spots bad, or are the softer spots bad? And who can afford to throw any of it away?"

I can. When I bought my first truffle -- a 2-ounce black one, from a very respectable mail-order place -- everyone in my family gathered around reverently while I opened it. As that dank, poisonous scent seeped out of the box we all reeled back, screaming. "Maybe that's just how it smells," I said with a briskness belying my inner conviction that I'd just spent $150 on some mildewed manure. "I bet when I actually make something with it, we'll love it." So I put together a batch of scalloped potatoes with truffles. When I took them out of the oven, we once again all reeled back, screaming. I scraped the whole mess into the garbage without even letting it cool.

I waited a year or two and then ordered a second truffle -- a white one this time. (By the way, in Italy, it's illegal to carry white truffles on public transportation.) This time I took a hasty sniff and left the box on the counter while I regained my courage elsewhere. I came into the kitchen a few hours later to find that my husband and kids had smothered the box in several plastic bags and stuffed it into my snap-top cake carrier. We never went near it again, and gradually the scent faded away. The truffle was dead. We had killed it.

Since truffles look so fungoid, why can't they taste more like mushrooms? Why do they have to be tubers? And why am I working so hard to convince myself that they're worthless? Hating them makes me feel left out and stupid. I'm generally good about forcing myself to learn to love foods I hate if it's clear that they're not going to go away. But truffles defeat me. Maybe I lack the truffle-appreciation gene.

"If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all," a mother might say at this point. Not mine, since she knows it's a principle I violate every time I draw breath to speak. However, I can say plenty of nice things about dried porcini, which truffles should have been. Dried porcini have an intensity of flavor that can stand up to anything. Because they start out so tough and leathery (you could probably back your car over them and they'd still be OK), you can cook them forever. They blossom instead of withering. They're available in the produce departments of most supermarkets. And they're so much cheaper than truffles that you're really saving money every time you use them.

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