The trick with truffles? You’ve got to go hard

There’s no point grating or slicing a parsimonious quantity over something and hoping to get the buzz. Do this instead.

Black truffles. Picture: istock

It’s that wonderful time of year when complete strangers make contact saying they’d like to give you a truffle. Not you, obviously, but me, occasionally. A little jar arrived in the post the other day with a black nugget of a truffle that was worth, maybe, $50 or $60. And a picture of the dog that sniffed it out. Don’t tell Media Watch.

I don’t know anybody who doesn’t like truffles, although it’s conceivable I suppose. Musty, fungal, earthy… all the descriptors have been exhausted. Truffles are a little like parmesan: on its own, not so much, but as the final olfactory piece of the puzzle, unbeatable.

Anyway, it’s what you do with them that counts. You’ve got to go hard. There’s no point grating or slicing a parsimonious quantity over something and hoping to get the buzz. That’s like pouring a shot of really good whisky and topping up the glass with water from the tap. Using all your truffle to make two plates of something produces a much better result than stretching it out over a series of meals. So yes, it turns dinner into a fairly expensive proposition if you haven’t been sent one by a lovely stranger.

My first, almost holy (white) truffle experience was with pasta in Italy, so that’s where I always go if one of these things magically arrives. Four hundred grams of the right flours, two whole eggs, eight yolks, a pinch of salt and a dash of olive oil and you’re on the way to a lovely tagliatelle. Warm some cream with finely shaved truffle, toss the cooked pasta through, divide it into bowls and finish with quality parmesan and the rest of the truffle on top. Inhale. If you’ve got more time, some chicken stock and access to proper gruyère, there’s a Mark Best recipe for truffled mac and cheese that’s even better, and it’s a doddle to find online.

Chefs can’t really get away with that for paying customers and at this time of year, dedicated truffle dinners are happening all over the country, particularly in WA where most of the nation’s harvest comes from around the town of Manjimup. They expect to pull 19 tonnes of the things out of the ground this season, I’m told, with a serious portion exported to Asia, the US and Europe. Like great white sharks and wealthy miners, it’s just something WA does bigger, and better.

So chefs are really stretching themselves to get black truffle into dishes punters will pay big money for, some more successfully than others. I’ve been to two truffle dinners in just one week. Only one made a lot of sense. And if you’d told me beforehand that raw scallop with celeriac cream, toasted hazelnuts, fresh baby coriander and wafers of truffle was going to change my life, I’d have said you’ve been drinking. Ditto the unlikely but ultimately delightful idea of truffle and dark chocolate combined for tiramisu. The chefs from Santini Grill can take a proper bow.

Wonder if I’ve left it too late to plant a few truffle trees?