Both Black Périgord and White Alba truffles can transform what would otherwise be a mere culinary masterpiece into a quasi mystical dining experience. Read as writer Scott Rose reconfirms the true truffle as a delicacy singularly apposite to an unforgettable luxury charter.



The Italian composer and bon vivant Gioachino Rossini confessed having cried three times as an adult: when they booed his first opera, when he heard Paganini play violin, and when he saw a truffled turkey fall overboard during a boating party. His emotional engagement with truffles is shared by Alexandre Dumas, who called them le saint des saints de la table, the holy of holies of the table, and Collette, who said “if one can not have too many truffles, one does without them.”
   
Lord Byron kept a truffle on his work desk, because inhaling its pungent fragrance gave him inspiration to produce verses of breathtaking genius. William Makepeace Thackeray, for his part, was no stranger to the olfactory inebriation occasioned by truffles. He wrote: “Presently, we were aware of an odor gradually coming towards us, something musky, fiery, savory, mysterious – a hot drowsy smell, that lulls the senses, and yet enflames them – the truffles were coming.”
   
Truffles are the fruiting body of underground fungal colonies that live in a symbiotic relationship with deciduous trees. The hyphae (filaments) of the fungi infiltrate the root cells of the trees, setting up an exchange of nutrients. Fungi, not capable of photosynthesis, take their sugars from the host tree. The tree, in return, receives through the hyphae nutrients and water in quantities it could not take in through its root hairs alone. These tree/fungus relationships are referred to as mycorrhizae, from the Greek for fungus, mykes, and root, rhiza.
   
The distinctive aroma of Truffles has evolved. The underground growth is an adaptation to forest fires, droughts, and cold, which mushrooms can not survive. As truffle spores are contained entirely inside the fruiting body, they depend on animals to dig them up, eat, and spread them. That process is called mycophagy, again from Greek, mykes meaning fungus and phagein to eat. The strong scent allows animals to locate truffles. The red-backed vole lives almost exclusively on the delicacy, though admittedly one would not actually care to just be a vole. More famously, pigs, sows in particular, pursue truffles, as a chemical compound in them is nearly identical to a male pig pheromone that excites the lady swine.
   
Are truffles an aphrodisiac? Artists have often picked up on the popular notion that they are. Brillat-Savarin, who called truffles “the diamonds of the kitchen,” makes the distinction that in women they awake thoughts erotic and gourmet, whereas in men, they awake thoughts gourmet and erotic. More directly, addressing the question of whether they are aphrodisiacal, he said that at the very least, truffles make “women more willing, and men more likable.” An anecdote related in his Physiology of Taste has a married woman flirting more than she ought to with a friend of her husband and then blaming her waywardness on the presence of truffles.
   
The term truffle has been applied to various types of tubers around the world but the only two worthy of you and a charter yacht vacation are the Black Périgord Truffle (Tuber melanosporum) and the White Alba Truffle (Tuber magnatum). Charter yacht chefs generally do have experience incorporating truffles into their menus, yet it is advisable to communicate your specific gustatory desires to the crew through your broker in advance of a vacation. What delights might you elect to enjoy when anchored next December in Port St. Charles, Barbados? Lobster consommé with black truffle and foie gras could be the perfect opener to a main dish of lamb shoulder with a truffle stuffing. For dessert, a pineapple and black truffle salad, as described in Proust’s À la Recherche du Temps Perdu.
   
The Black Périgord Truffle is the object of a veritable cult in the area around Périgueux, France. A truffle mass is celebrated in a church in Richerenches on the third Sunday of each January, la Saint-Antoine, named for the patron saint of trufflers. La Confrérie des Chevaliers du Diamant Noir, The Brotherhood of the Knights of the Black Diamond, lead a festive procession through the town prior to the mass. Carrying baskets copiously laden with truffles, they sport black suits, capes, and hats as well as yellow neck ribbons with medallions. The congregation offers its truffles in lieu of monetary donations. The delicacies are placed on the altar, blessed, and then after the mass sold at an auction to benefit the church.
   
When phylloxera decimated French vineyards in the 1800s, desperate farmers planted oaks; black truffles abounded. Yet the First World War and other influences reduced production in the twentieth century. Nowadays, most truffles are grown on plantations. The roots of seedlings are treated with spores and planted in locations as far and wide as New Zealand and Tennessee. World-class chefs, among them Daniel Boulud and Thomas Keller, have endorsed certain of the Tuber melanosporum from Tennessee as being “the real thing.”
   
White Alba truffles, by contrast, have yet to be successfully cultivated. They are found in the Piedmont region of Italy, with the finest coming from the area around Alba. They grow beneath oak, poplar, willow, and various other trees, though never on maple or cedar. The coloration, aroma, and flavor of a white truffle vary according to the tree with which it carried on its mycorrhizal relationship. If you sample two plates of crab meat risotto, one showered with shavings of a white truffle harvested from beneath a willow, the other with white truffle from beneath an oak, you will note that the oak truffle has a more pronounced earthy muskiness while the willow truffle has a more delicate perfume and flavor.
   
White Alba truffles are more costly than black Périgord truffles, owing to their greater scarcity. Each November in the castle of Grinzane Cavour, the worldwide white truffle auction takes place and is satellite-linked to points around the globe. Robert De Niro and Sharon Stone compete with investment bankers from Hong Kong for the prized delicacies. During a charity phase of the 2006 auction, the property tycoon Gordon Wu acquired a 3.3 pound white Alba truffle for $160,406. Chef Umberto Bombana of the Hong Kong Ritz-Carlton used the amazing specimen for a five-course feast hosted by Wu.
   
I spoke of truffles with Le Bernardin’s Chef Eric Ripert. He grew up in Andorra; his mother would bring truffles to their home from the market just over the border in Seu d’Urgell, Spain. “When shopping for fresh truffles,” he advises, “make sure they are firm, aromatic, dry, and washed, not covered with soil. Then proper storage is of the essence. You may, of course, store a black truffle with eggs, and produce exquisite omelets, as the taste and smell of a ripe truffle are strong enough to penetrate the shells. Storing truffles in rice will make for a delicious risotto. But the best means of storing fresh truffles is in cold water. They keep well that way for about a week, not losing their scent and taste into the water as they do into rice or eggs.”
   
What does Chef Ripert think of using canned black truffles during the off season? “Canned black truffles can be excellent and may be used when finding fresh ones is not possible. The can must say ‘Tuber melanosporum,’ and you must buy from a reputable company. The gold-standard for the industry is Tebeyer.” (www.tebeyer.fr) Readers please note that truffle fraud exists; conscienceless deceivers have all kinds of ruses for passing off sham tubers. France’s National Institute for Agricultural Research has a test that sequences the ribosomal DNA of truffles and truffle-based products to determine their authenticity, which does help keep the market free of phonies, yet you want to deal with trusted sources.
   
“Black truffle,” says Chef Ripert “is particularly well absorbed by rich, starchy foods. That’s why truffled mashed potatoes topped with lobster works so well. But every root vegetable, without exception, takes on the essence of black truffle comme il faut. Salad greens, asparagus, and garlic too are great truffle targets. Black truffle butter, of course, is a perfect conduit, and truffle vinaigrettes are great for salads. I personally am not very enthusiastic about truffle oils. Yet at Blue in the Ritz-Carlton on Grand Cayman, we serve wonderful parmesan-truffle fries that do use truffle oil.”
   
At Le Bernardin in Manhattan, Chef Ripert will sometimes offer a seasonal truffle tasting menu. According to the quality of a given year’s harvest, the special menus could be offered for two weeks or two months. In December, when black and white truffle seasons overlap, diners might find themselves luxuriating with dishes including, for instance, sea scallops cooked in black truffle butter and showered with white truffle shards, and risotto cooked with black truffle and garnished with white shavings: things that John Lennon might have included in his song Imagine.
   
Igor Stravinsky made a culinary analogy to describe his creative process. “One has a nose. The nose scents and it chooses. An artist is simply a kind of pig snouting truffles.” When deciding on the details of your next yacht charter, why not be an artist and sniff out a vessel with a truffles-experienced chef? After all, December, when black and white truffle seasons intersect, is an ideal time to cruise the Caribbean.