Truffle Hounds, Romance, and Intrigue
Book Review
Truffles – just the word conjures up images of luxury, European delicacies, and Michelin-starred chefs. But dig a little deeper, and you’ll find yourself immersed in a world of intrigue, romance, and dogs!
Truffle Hound
“It strikes me as charmingly absurd that this entire industry balances precariously on dog noses. For all their genius, they’re still dogs. One minute they’re visionaries; the next, they’re eating deer poop.”
One sniff of a first-rate truffle and Rowan Jacobsen is hooked and sets out to explore the world of truffles. Truffle Hound: On the Trail of the World’s Most Seductive Scent, with Dreamers, Schemers, and Some Extraordinary Dogs takes the reader from Italian forests to Spanish fields to British hillsides. There are numerous truffle varieties, both cultivated and wild. There’s money to be made but also unscrupulous profiteers. And speed is the name of the game:
“As we drive, I think about how this big truffle will arrive in the German dealer’s hands tomorrow and be in a restaurant that night. In a product where freshness is everything, that’s transformative … The smartphone may be the best thing to happen to truffles since the dog.”
Deciphering the magic of the truffle is complicated. As Jacobsen explains,
“A truffle is a fragrance factory. It has more in common with flowers than food, and eating it is kind of like eating flowers to get the perfume. The magic isn’t in the truffle; it’s constantly being made by the truffle.”
The stars of the book are the truffle hounds who enthrall and amaze Jacobsen with their skill:
“For the next four hours, István and Mokka show me levels of truffling mastery I had no idea existed. Mokka crisscrosses the forest at a gentle canter, nose low, tail sweeping wide and slow. Occasionally he’ll freeze, raise his nose high in the air, sampling, then charge directly to a tree fifty meters away. Sometimes he’ll mark spots faster than we can dig them, and István has to throw markers on the ground and return later. Sometimes he can tell the truffle’s not ripe yet, and doesn’t bother digging – they’ll check again in a few days. Other times, he circles back on his path, circling, circling, ever tightening. Nose right on the ground now, left, right, tail wagging short, quicker, there. Only very rarely does István dig in the wrong direction, but when he does Mokka noses his hand out of the way and starts a new hole at a better angle.”
Truffle Underground
If you prefer thrillers to animal stories, you’ll want to read The Truffle Underground: A Tale of Mystery, Mayhem, and Manipulation in the Shadowy Market of the World’s Most Expensive Fungus by Ryan Jacobs.
There’s truffle popcorn, truffle chips, and truffle cheese, but unless you’re very rich, you won’t have tasted authentic French or Italian truffles. They’re too rare and too expensive. And that rarity has led to fraud, theft, poison, and murder. The Truffle Underground by Ryan Jacobs reads like a true-crime novel. It will change your opinion of foraging forever.
The Romance of Provence
In Ten Trees and a Truffle Dog: Sniffing Out the Perfect Plot in Provence, Jamie Ivey and his family set out to buy property in Provence and make a living from the land. He’s following a romantic vision in a very haphazard way, which is excellent light entertainment for francophiles.
For more of Jamie Ivey’s Provençal adventures, try out Extremely Pale Rosé, La Vie en Rosé, and Rosé en Marché as Ivey switches from truffles to wine.
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