Fork It Over The Intrepid Adventures of a Professional Eater-Mantesh by Unknown (rm book recommendations .TXT) 📕

chunk of truffle between slices, chopped truffles over the top, and more chopped truffles in a Swiss chard puree underneath. Indeed, it is truffles three ways. Black-truffle risotto has me wild with anticipation, because I prefer it to the famous risotto made with white truffles, but the chef seems overwhelmed—his dining room is packed with cus-F O R K I T O V E R

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tomers determined to eat as many black truffles as they can as quickly as possible. The boardinghouse ambience does not lend itself to refined food preparation. The risotto is overcooked. Finally, he offers his pièce de résistance: under a puff-pastry crown is foie gras and a whole truffle the size of a golf ball.

Rhapsodies are written about such indulgences, for this is the culinary equivalent of a date with a nymphomaniac. Yet, I must admit, chew-ing a whole black truffle is like gnawing on a radish. It is more sinful than pleasurable, like looking up the skirt of a girl you don’t really like.

“My father did not organize truffles the way I do today,” says Michel Troisgros of La Maison Troisgros in Roanne, where our truffle party has encamped the next day. “He was very serious about truffles, very classic, and he cooked truffles for the sake of the truffles. With the bread-maker, he would cook a whole truffle in a loaf of bread. He did not want to play with associations the way I do today.” Michel recalls being at home, in the kitchen watching preparations for a family gathering, when Pierre Troisgros did something unimaginable to a truffle. “My father julienned the truffle, cut it in sticks like matches. It had better texture, more elegance, and even the taste was different. The same product cut differently had a different taste!” From then on, he became a student of truffles. He came to understand that sheer prodigality was not their best use. He discovered that the black truffle tasted best when combined with fat.

“For me,” he says, “the best friend of the truffle is foie gras and also butter, the kind with rock salt inside.” He also came up with a most unlikely combination from reading an old Italian cookbook that recommended pairing the white truffle of Alba with a fresh anchovy fillet.

From that he devised what he says is his finest truffle creation—slivers of raw black truffles, salted anchovy fillet, and salted butter on a thin cracker.

To me, it sounds like extra-smelly snack food. When I taste it, I’m stunned. The anchovy is no longer acting as a member of the fish family; it has become truffle-helper. It supercharges the truffles. It is a detona-2 6 8

A L A N R I C H M A N

tion of truffle flavor. Had I eaten this creation wearing a blindfold, I do not believe I would have identified the presence of an anchovy.

His truffle dinner, which follows the hors d’oeuvres, is unsurpassed.

He serves fava and cocoa beans with black truffles in a light broth made from chicken stock, lemon juice, and olive oil. It is perfect, even obvious, and I can’t understand why it hasn’t been done before until he tells me that every one of the beautiful cocoa beans, which are ivory white with maroon veins, has to be peeled by hand. The dish is both rustic and cerebral, intellectual fare for the farmhand. There are soft lan-goustines with leeks, julienned truffles, and strips of raw pear, as well as a variation on chicken Kiev, which is one of the warhorses of Continental cuisine. His interpretation has pigeon breast, foie gras, and truffles in a lightly breaded crust—thankfully, no butter squirts out. He has cheese enrobed in truffles, too, but my heart is still with Bruno’s goat cheese, truffles, and olive oil. At my request, he gives us one of his father’s legendary truffle dishes—potatoes, shallots, and truffles in a warm vinaigrette. I find the acidity overwhelming, and when I tell him this, he shrugs and says, “It’s a classic. I didn’t create it.” So much for truffles the old-fashioned way.

On the wall of a municipal building in the village of Richerenches is a plaque from the national council of culinary arts certifying that truffle masses are celebrated here. That is correct: each year, on the third Sunday in January, the truffle is formally revered.

I have come on a Saturday, the day of the truffle market. The streets are packed with truffle buyers and truffle sellers. There is a pizza wagon, proof that plenty of tourists are around, too. Many of them are eagerly sampling truffle liqueur, which they will buy as presents for unappreciative aunts and uncles who will leave it unopened in closets for decades. After the fair, I accompany Hervé Poron, owner of Plantin truffles, to his warehouse, and I am fortunate to be there when one of his buyers (more correctly referred to as a broker) brings in a truckload of truffles, about four hundred pounds of them.

I ask him if his prominence in the business assures him of getting F O R K I T O V E R

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the best truffles in Provence, and he replies, “I’d like to believe that, but it often happens when you buy truffles that there are not enough of the best ones. They’ve been sold to restaurants.” He is exceedingly practical, not prone to poetic loquacity when the subject of truffles arises. I mention the romancing of the white truffle that takes place in Italy, how restaurant owners compete to purchase the largest white truffle each season for tens of thousands of dollars so they can be photographed next to it. “With black truffles, we do not do the pictures,” he says.

At his home, he suggests we sit outside in the surprisingly warm January sunshine. We are surrounded by stone walls and gnarled vines, nosed by his friendly puppy, making our own truffle bruschetta. His wife has brought out a