Oh! Truffles!

Looka here!

Those lumpish little white things are Tuber gibbosum, the Oregon White Truffle. Subterranean and very special, truffles have a long history in fine cookery, medicine, and — ahem — sexual enticement. And these truffles, these particular truffles which are said to rival in flavor the costly and desirable White Italian truffles, grow here in Western Oregon, in the duff beneath fir trees. In the duff, I should expand, beneath fir trees such as grow in our own woods. The mycelia of truffles form symbiotic relationships with the roots of Douglas Firs, among other tree species. The short form of the relationship is this: the fungus, living in contact with the tree roots, creates an underground structure called a mycorrhiza. The fungus takes up certain minerals from the soil that the tree would not be able to on its own, and permits transfer of the nutrients into the tree. Good for everyone.

I confess here, I’ve been looking for these little fungi for 3 winters now, and they had me beat. I took a class called Truffles in Your Forest. I went out and scraped around under trees with a gardening fork thing. I pushed  my nose into the dirt and inhaled, hoping for that distinctive whiff of bleach and fungus that is said to betray the presence of truffles in the ground. I wondered what it would take to train a pig to find them for me. (First off, I imagined you’d have to have found some to show to the pig. But today I learned that it is the distinct smell of the truffle that attracts the pig all on its own: it reminds the sow of her beau… boar… it smells like his saliva to her. How romantic. I can see why truffles would be thought an aphrodisiac.*)

I went out today under the kind tutelage of a neighbor, to find truffles. Deborah lives a short way up the road. We met today for the first time, and only because she came across this blog one web-surfing day, and then invited me to come learn from her about truffles in the forest.  While we were rummaging around the tree roots, we chatted about sheep and poultry and common acquaintances, fleeces and eggs, heritage livestock breeds and rescue flocks. It was a charming way to spend part of an afternoon before haring off to town after a pair of insulated overalls.

Here is Deborah demonstrating truffling technique:

She generously showed me how and kept handing me pale nodules to put in my bag.

Along the way we saw indications that others have been working the truffle grounds, too. Truffles are clearly a favorite all around the forest. The ground beneath the trees is pocked with little excavations like this one:

The white flecks inside the hole are bits of truffle left behind by the eat-and-run lifestyle of small rodents. Careless rodents! I left no pieces of truffle behind.

So, I drove off toward town with woodland treasure on the car seat beside me. I acquired the insulated overalls and came on home to hand over my bag of booty. “You got some? You got some. I can tell, you got some!”

I presented a handful of dirty little marbles.

What did we do with them?

We sniffed around. We grated some and tasted. Grated, it was slightly damp in feel, smelled of fungus, and was not profoundly strong. But they were tiny little nibbles. We were tentative. We sliced some, and marveled at the inner pattern of shapes and color:

Then we cooked. That is, Richard cooked.

First course: we tried some in a cup of tomato soup. Good, but very subtle.

Then we had small omelets

stuffed with truffles and shallots. That was pretty good. We felt less tentative.

Third course: Grated truffles blended into butter, over simple pasta. All the rest of them.

And that was really good. The aroma of the truffles traveled upstream from the tongue into the nose and hung around in the sinuses for a while. The taste on the tongue lingered, sent little sensory delights all down the throat. The next forkful awaited, fragrant, nutty, fungal, slightly musky, slightly… bleachy. This was the flavor we had read of. This, not subtle at all, was the gold ring of mushroom collecting.

We ate them all. They’re gone. We carefully set aside the remains of the truffled butter and will have it at breakfast with scrambled eggs.

What a day! What a treat! One more thing off the Bucket List!

______________________

*About the aphrodisiac: Look up the aphrodisiacal properties of truffles and you will find results like, “The evidence is unclear…” and, “There is no scientific verification of this.” But, every wonderful, mysterious and rare ingredient has its secrets. If we knew for sure, wouldn’t it lose some of its attraction?

Here is the science, as taken from Wikipedia:

Androstenol is a sex pheromone, possessing a musk-like odor. It is found in large quantities in boar saliva, but also in smaller quantities in human sweat glands. It is analogous to sex hormones yet has minimal or no androgenic activity. Androstenol is secreted by the adrenal gland into systemic circulation in humans: Systemic effects have not been well studied.

Androstenol, or a chemical derivative, is found in truffles, and is offered as an explanation for how pigs locate them deep in the ground.

Both isomers have a weak, characteristic odor; however alpha-androstenol is often associated with a sandalwood-like aroma due to residual solvents (alkyl acetates).

So, go have fun.

… Wind Doth Blow

Oh, dear.

The snow came and went, the rain swept through, and the sweeping included a few odd bits of architecture. This was our greenhouse.

It’s pretty small damage from a storm that left  some folks with burst pipes, collapsed roofs, or standing water in their livingrooms. Still, I think it’s sheltered its last tomato starts.

The North wind doth blow and we shall have snow,
And what will poor robin do then, poor thing?
He’ll sit in a barn and keep himself warm
and hide his head under his wing, poor thing.

Well, never mind that, because this weekend THE SUN HAS COME OUT. Rush, rush. Get into the garden!

Almost always there comes a weekend in January when the weather fairs off and some short spasm of garden work can be indulged.  Usually I give it to the herb garden. Weeding out and snipping up the herb plants is a job on the right scale for a short interval of sun in midwinter, and the soil there is more likely to have drained enough to be forgiving of gloved hands in the dirt. At the moment we have no herb garden, since everything that was garden is now heaps of construction spoils.

But there is orchard to prune! Whee! I mean it. I have had such a case of toxic garden withdrawal this year, and all the more acute in the winter weather. So I found the clippers

(now, there’s a miracle all on its own) and went forth to do service against the forces of crossing limbs.

Now, look here. It is January, after all. So I wore my coat and hat like a sensible gardener. But it was not 15 minutes when I had the coat off again.

My condolences go to you-all who live east of us and are looking at those -20F temperatures. I know I was tired of just ordinary 20F quickly enough. But today I revel. And I am not alone. Little speaks of comfort like a hen finding a place to dust up on a winter afternoon

or a cat absorbing the heat from a window.

I give you that the day was short for the task, my arms and hands are not well toned after 3 months or so of garden idleness, my clippers, peccato mio,  are not sharp,

and the quest for the perfect 45-degree cut is never reliably fulfilled.  But I sweated a bit, and reminded myself of a couple of callouses softening, and found a few muscles that have lain dormant. Ahh. How sweet the smell of severed bark. How musical the sound of clippers closing.

A good day in January.

Northern Hemisphere January Disorder

Ah, well, the party’s over.

And we made it through another one! 2008’s down the pipe, and 2009’s been birthed.

And suddenly, we realize, it’s January.

Some of us are less than happy with the way it’s showing up here:

All this white stuff coming back makes it darned hard to find the mouse!

First we had snow, then we had rain by the barrel (3 inches in 24 hours, for Pete’s sake), and now we have snow again. Yellowcat is clearly not in favor of anything that covers her hunting ground and provides rodent hiding places. What she is in favor of is, when the temperature dips under the freeze mark by more than a little, we turn on the heat in the “roll-up,” our little storage and pantry room. A cat is a professional at finding comfort. She will sit so close to that heater you think she might ignite. If there is anything to approve of in winter, it’s that heater.

A funny thing happens shortly after we pass the Solstice. In the same way the Autumnal Equinox causes a human to cleave with urgency to woolwork and stitchery (if you don’t believe this, watch next year and see how many handworkers reach into sewing boxes and knitting bags that have lain idle through the summer; see how many of them require an infusion of patterns and materials at this time), as soon as the Winter Solstice is marked off the calendar on the wall, the gardener in us stirs, stretches its green limbs, and sighs with yearning.

But, mercy me, it’s January. Even the Gardengoyle is in hiding.

Here’s the thing: There is nothing you can do about it just now. That’s why the seed catalogs are going to start filling your mailbox next week. Those folks know exactly what’s going on under our wool hats, and they are kindly sending you the only treatment known for Northern Hemisphere January Disorder: pictures of gardens (with the suggestion you buy some seeds, quickly, while you’re still in Stage I)!

In our case, it’s worse than usual this year. Anything resembling a garden around here is either potted up and snugged under hay or piled in a grim boneyard of uprooted roses and fruit trees. It was the best we could do, and we’re hoping some of it will survive to be replanted once the construction spoils have been redistributed.

So: THERE IS A WHOLE GARDEN TO PLAN(T).

Here’s what I did with my long weekend.

Of course, I can’t possibly read them all in one sitting, but I can read in them all. It helps. A little.

But I’d like to push a seed into the dirt.