The Man Who Ate Everything - Jeffrey Steingarten [113]
Lola began to dig at the base of a hazelnut tree, and Bernardo hurried over, gently pulling Lola back from the shallow hole she had dug and brushing away some dirt with his hands. He found nothing, and let Lola go at it again for a few seconds. Then he scratched the earth with the small metal sapin he carried on his belt and discovered the top of a white truffle. Very carefully he reached around it and pulled it out. My pulse rate soared.
Our first truffle was small, about an inch across, but smooth and well formed, and its perfume filled the air. Bernardo gave Lola a biscuit and replaced the earth, smoothed the surface, and scattered some dry leaves over it. If the tree’s roots were protected and the earth was cared for, a truffle would mature in this same spot exactly one year from now by the lunar calendar, Bernardo told us. Besides, an exposed hole would alert other trifulau to Bernardo’s secret spot.
We passed the truffle from nose to nose. Instantly the truffle feasts of recent days passed before our eyes: white truffles on green noodles moistened with fonduta; a mousse of white truffles and guinea hen liver; cold loin of rabbit sprinkled with white truffles; an asparagus flan in a pool of truffled cream; polenta layered with white truffles, raw egg yolk, and the local rubbiolo di murazzano cheese; risotto of nettles and strawberries with slivers of white truffle; and hand-rolled, hand-cut tagliarini (tajarin in the Langhe dialect) made only of egg yolks and flour, tossed in melted butter, flavored with fresh sage, and covered with paper-thin slices of white truffles. This last is the simplest and incontrovertibly the best way to enjoy white truffles, and it is served in virtually every restaurant in the Piedmont, from the humblest to the most ambitious.
Trifulau work mostly after dark, and it is easier to see a white dog in the late autumn moonlight than a black one. When you harvest truffles in the daytime, other trifulau will discover your secret places. “I do my best work between two and six in the morning, several kilometers’ walk from here,” Bernardo said. “But I would never take anyone with me.”
We found two more small truffles in the hazelnut orchard and then descended into a muddy gorge and the woods beyond it. The sky was dark now, and when the autumn mists floated over the moon, the only light came from Bernardo’s flashlight. Lola discovered three more truffles in the woods, small and smooth.
As we headed back to Bernardo’s house, he reminisced about his largest truffle, eighteen ounces in weight, the size of a grapefruit, and worth over a thousand dollars at today’s prices. Ten years ago, Bernardo gave up truffle hunting because he had become possessed by it. He would leave home in the late afternoon, and after a day and a half in the cold damp woods and two packs of cigarettes, he would return home sick and exhausted. Like many others, he had become a truffle junkie—and one day he simply gave it up, except as a moderate and controlled activity to supplement his tiny government pension. “My dream,” Bernardo told us, “is to see, together in one place, all the truffles I have found in my lifetime.”
Cesare’s restaurant was closed that night, and he took us out for an evening of eating and drinking with his friends, including Matteo, a retired trifulau who was famous for finding more white truffles