Digging for Delicacies: Tenn. & N.C. Truffles
In the green rolling hills of East Tennessee and the piedmont of North Carolina, where tobacco barns and run-down house trailers are the most common denominators on the horizon, gold-diggers sharpen up their pick-axes to scratch in the dry red clay soil. The dogs that stick to their sides are not coon dogs or even hound dogs, but the wooly coated Lagotto Romagnolo, a dog of particularly keen olfactory senses bred near Ravenna, Italy. The gold in question will not find its way into any bank vault, but will be sliced thin and served as a garnish in the nation’s top restaurants.
We’re speaking of the Périgord Truffle, Tuber melanosporum, that mysterious fungal beast also known under the name of Black Gold, Black Diamond, Black Princess, French Black Winter Truffle, Truffe du Périgord. Fruity, musky, floral, earthy (but a few of the terms used to describe the personality of individual specimens), this fungus is actually a sack of spores which attains maturity under the earth, attached by an almost invisible mycelium to the roots of certain host trees, notably oak and hazelnut.
For the complete story, please read the Spring 2008 issue of Marquee Mountain South.
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