Savory Truffle

"Connoisseur" is too strong, but I do consider myself an admirer of food. I hold it in reverence, appreciating its nutritional, gastronomical, and flavorful worth.

And as it were, I have an ongoing fascination with extravagantly high-priced "super-foods." I have sampled a few, like saffron, which is the most expensive spice in the world. Relatively speaking, it's worth more than gold. Depending on the market -- and depending on how hungry people are, I suppose -- prices range anywhere from $50 - $80 an ounce. A lot of that cost is a consequence of harvesting, a labor intensive job that takes something incalculable like 80,000 flower stigmas needed to produce one paltry pound. From pictures I have seen, overworked and undereducated workers hand-pluck these flowers in far off, foreign fields that are strikingly verdant; similarly, saffron-infused paella is equally vibrant, a distinctive hue of yellow that almost glows. Overall, the taste is a little subtle (which doesn't necessarily carry a negative connotation), but sometimes borders on the muted (which carries a decidedly more negative connotation). Perhaps my palette isn't as refined as I like to think it is, but I worry that saffron might be little more than fancy food-coloring. I'm sure I would miss it if it were gone, I just don't know if I would miss it dearly. In the case of paella, I think the make-or-break factors are the freshness of the seafood, or adding just enough chicken stock, or not overcooking or undercooking the rice. It seems like saffron might be a very expensive afterthought, but I'm happy to know what it tastes like.

I've also had caviar, most likely the poster child of high-end, "designer" food. It carries an authority, a reputation. Caviar is rich; it lives in a gated community, it pays for tennis lessons, it has an excellent 401k plan, it sends its children to private school, it attends black tie events that raises money for orphans in Africa. Again, harvesting is a process: breed and nurture the sturgeon in specialized farms, closely monitor their pregnancy, gut them when they're ready to burst, then package their babies. Depending on what quality you try -- I'm assuming everything I've eaten ranges from average to slightly below -- there may or may not be an overtly fishy taste. More than anything, it'll taste salty; not unpleasantly so, but salty. The appeal, I think, is not so much the taste but the texture and mouth feel. I've heard some people liken it to little balls of Jell-O, which isn't quite right. Caviar has a little more resiliency than that, it fights back a bit. So tiny beads of tapioca would be a more appropriate comparison. They kind of pop in your mouth, which is a little fun, using your tongue to push them against the roof of your mouth. It's not as life-changing as some food elitists make it out to be, but like the saffron, I feel all the better having eaten it.

While in Japan, I've treated myself to Kobe beef. It's the fabled cut of meat from Waygu cattle. Intricately marbled with fat, its exceptionally juicy and unctuous. Ranchers achieve this higher quality of beef via its unorthodox method of raising the animal: they serve them sake and beer; feed them only top notch grain; brush their fur to a beautiful sheen; and give them daily massages that, presumably, lessen stiffness and muscle tension, resulting in tender steaks. At $300/lb, I'm not necessarily sure it's that much better than our good old fashioned domestic cows here in the States, but it is delicious...almost creamy. I had the tenderloin cut into thick medalions; it was cooked rare, the surface of the meat just barely licked by the flames of the grill. It lay on top of a bed of greens and underneath a sauce that I can't exactly recall. It was a great culinary experience, but I think the geographical experience of actually being in Japan was of more importance to me.

I've never tried Foie gras, but I know all about it. A duck (or goose) is kept in a tiny wire cage as a long metal tube is thrust down its throat, force-feeding it cornmeal several times a day. The bird continues to eat and eat until its liver becomes fatty and diseased, swelling over 10 times its normal size. The duck (or goose) is then put out of its bloated misery, slain for its engorged liver. This reminds me of the 3rd circle of Hell in Dante's Inferno. Because of their sins of a lifetime of over-gorging, the gluttons serve their punishment here, forced to eat mud and dirt for the rest of their damned existence. Somehow I think the duck's (or geese's) suffering is less poetic (and more cruel), but that wouldn't necessarily keep me from eating it.

But more than anything -- absolutely more than anything -- I want to try a truffle. They are fungi and they are precious. Pigs are used to hunt them, sniffing along the terrain in the mossy, foggy forests of Italy and France -- I can practically smell the heavy dew in the air. It all sounds so mystical and mythological. They seem so other-worldly, like something not of this time nor this dimension. I can imagine Hobbits feasting on them during their journey to Mount Doom, giving them the required nourishment to destroy Sauron's ring. It's the only food I can think of that is actually scoured for. I know food that is killed, produced, grown, and harvested, but definitely not scoured. They're worth $500 a pound. They often shave it into risotto, or on top of pasta. They look like little black clumps of coal that are the size of a clenched fist, ranging from the size of an infant's to an adult's. I want to know what all the hype is about, but interestingly, all online searches tend to be equally vague and inconclusive. According to Yahoo! Answers, the taste of truffles are "hard to define," "an acquired taste," and "unique," but I think that's kind of a cop out. It's like a non-answer. It's the type of response that leads me to believe these are people who don't know how to fully articulate their thoughts or, more likely, they've never actually tried a truffle and are just full of it. Most things taste like things -- fish tastes light and delicate, onion taste sweet and earthy, honey dew tastes clean and nectarous, Cheetos taste processed and artificial. So what do truffles taste like? I've heard some TV chefs describe it as a flavor similar to mushroom, which makes enough sense considering they're both fungus. And make no mistake, I love mushrooms. Regular white button, portobello, baby portabella, chantrelles, oyster, straw, cremini, morels -- they're delicious. But even if truffles tasted like the most intense, most exquisite mushroom ever, I still have a hard time believing that they're as good as we've been led to believe. Perhaps its legend precedes its flavor. I must eat it, though.