Hunting the White Truffle by Maureen Barry

The discerning gourmet knows that white truffles - tartufi bianchi - aren’t really white at all but look as venerably tawny as the crumbling campaniles of the Langhe, the fecund Piedmontese countryside north of Turin, whose medieval capital Alba is the truffle hunter’s Mecca. On the inside, however, white truffles turn out to be beige, with a moist, dense consistency that gives off the most penetrating scent and powerful flavour.

White truffles are a rarity and are found only in this small region, which forms a gentle, upland plain flowing down from the Ligurian Appennines to the Po Valley in a succession of meadows, woods and vineyards. Each hilltop is crowned with a towered castle or ruined bastion which contributes to the romantic charm of the landscape, whilst also being a reminder of harsher times, of feudal struggles, sacks and raids and the unending task of rebuilding.

No-one quite knows where the term “Langhe” came from. It might simply be dialect for ‘tongue’, the deep parallel ridges of earth that have been carved out over the millennia by the languid rivers Tanaro and Belbo.

Truffles are born early in the summer and attach themselves by microscopic filaments to the trees under which they grow in mysterious harmony with the phases of the moon and the cycle of the tree’s life. If there is sufficient rain in August the tubers can swell to a great size, ready for the truffle season in October. All attempts to seed them have proved vain; the white truffle is a parasite and can only grow wild.

In October, the Feria de Tartufo - the International Truffle Fair - transforms sleepy Alba into a hubbub of good-natured commerce. Gourmets stop and sniff as the all-pervading scent of truffles, of dark woodland places, of autumn, wafts from every shop and doorway. The excitement of the hunt is heightened by the cloak-and-dagger activities of the dealers, who dart down side streets flanked by bodyguards, their attache cases crammed with truffles and their wallets stuffed with bank notes. All truffle dealing is done in cash, never credit cards or promissory notes. A series of dry summers has pushed up the truffle price to $50 per ounce this year, more than five times their weight in silver.

The morning market in the Via Maestra is packed with stalls selling the knobbly tubers, graded in boxes according to size and quality. Texture is important, the truffles must be firm. Colour matters too: the paler the truffle the more highly it is prized. Discolouration and pitted marks are out. But most important is the aroma. The experts - from all over the world -Japan, USA, Germany, Venezuela, take a long time sniffing and conferring in low voices over the wooden boxes. Their selection will be dispatched in polystyrene boxes inside containers lined with dry ice, to reach their destination within twenty-four hours.

The life of a truffle is a short one - thirty days if kept carefully in the fridge with constant changes of dry linen, rather like a demanding infant. Truffle products are on sale, irresistible not to tuck a little culinary something into your suitcase for decadent eating on dreary winter days. Preserved truffles perhaps, never quite as good as fresh ones, an excellent truffle puree or the marvellous liquid amber, truffle-scented olive oil.

If any man has helped to put Alba on the map it is Mr.Truffle himself, Giacomo Morra, who has turned the Hotel Savona into a shrine for international epicures. It was Morra who had the bright idea of sending the truffle of the year to a celebrity. There has been a Rita Hayworth, a Marilyn Monroe, a Churchill, a Krushchev, a Pope John Paul VI, while the biggest find of all time, a whopping five and a half pounder, was sent to Harry Truman. Today, Giacomo’s sons, Mario and Francesco, run the family business from elegant new headquarters under the porticoes of the Piazza Elvio Pertinace.

During this time of feverish activity, the life of the trifolau, dialect for truffle hunter, is a hard one. He may be a farmer or butcher by day, but he spends most of the nocturnal hours in autumn rummaging with his dog among the bracken. Pedro Cerruti - known to everyone as Pierino - called for me stealthily by moonlight and within minutes we were driving through swirling mist under a fitful moon in a direction vaguely described as “north, only more to the west.” Pierino has been hunting truffles for fifty of his fifty-seven years and upholds the trifolau tradition of cloaking his movements in the strictest secrecy. “The knowledge” of the trifolau - the most fruitful woodland hiding places - is a lore jealously guarded and handed down from father to son. Wily hunters have been known to park their cars by the side of the road, take a bicycle from the boot and cycle miles in the opposite direction to fox the competition.

Together we bounded over a meadow and parked the car on the edge of a copse. “Truffle trees...” Pierino murmured, oak, elm, poplar and hazelnut. Anyone can roam the forest, only land under cultivation is considered private. Pierino took from the boot the simple tools of his trade. A pick, a tattered jacket with capacious pockets and a small mongrel dog called Kira. With a pinpoint of light from a laser torch - in the old days they used lanterns - we plunged into the undergrowth.

“Fifteen days of the month I can see by moonlight, I don’t have to give myself away,” grinned Pierino.

Some way into the forest Kira stopped abruptly, pressed her nose to the earth and began to dig dementedly. Pierino restrained her and gently, using his pick, unearthed an unpreposessing brown tuber. I held it in my hand and inhaled. It smelt dank and rather tame. Only later, at lunch, with the first shavings from a gratta tartufa liberally scattered over my fonduta, did I come to appreciate the arresting odour of the white truffle. If the earth were to have an essence, it must be this, a hint of unknown mysteries, of Coleridge’s “caverns measureless to man”.

Every five minutes or so Kira and Pierino unearthed a truffle, mostly quite small as it was early in the season. Kira, for all her efforts, went mad with joy over small pieces of grissini stick.

Soon it was nearly dawn and Pierino’s pockets were bulging. Time to descend to Alba where the market began at 4 am and finished at 8 am. Pierino was cagey about the weight of our haul, “only about six hundred grams I should think,” but he looked pretty smug. “Twenty years ago there were three hunters in Monta, where I live. There are thirty-two now. And there are less truffles because the farmers use chemical fertilizers.”

We stopped at the delicatessen in Monta run by Pierino’s son Nino and washed the truffles under cold water, using a sagina, a little twig brush. Nino will sell some privately and the rest will go to Morra in the Alba market. Over a huntsman’s breakfast of salami, warm focaccia bread, Barolo wine and steaming coffee, Pierino grew expansive. Nino didn’t truffle hunt much, the autumn mists were disastrous for his weak chest. “But he’ll make a good trifolau”, Pierino pointed to his grandson, a four-year-old bruiser. “A bit young at the moment, but already showing signs of stamina.”

Most visitors to Alba come not just to buy truffles, but also to eat them. The truffle season is also the wild mushroom season and the market overflows with stalls of funghi porcini and golden ovuli. It’s also the game season (partridge, wild duck, pheasant, quail and hare) and the season for frogs and snails. The Vendemmia brings in the grape harvest for the outstanding red wines of Barolo, Barbaresco and the whites of Asti. The French influence from aristocratic kitchens (Piedmont was part of the empire of Savoy) has refined the classic dishes of the Langhe to produce an imaginative and subtle cuisine. A Piedmontese meal can be a protracted experience with up to thirty antipasti, which they call assaggi (tastings) followed by numerous substantial courses. Nowadays folk have reduced their calorific intake but Sunday lunch remains a hearty meal that the Torinese will travel several hours to savour.

Visit the Langhe in autumn and if you don’t come home in a haze of bonhomie towards Italy and its gastronomy, then I’ll eat my linen-wrapped cold-stored tartufo bianco whole and profligately, without a thought to the dinner guests I have lined up to share the shavings, and before its thirty day expiry date is up.