Ken

It is certain that all commercial truffle oil or "truffle salt" is chemically enhanced, period. Unless you've made it yourself, it will be infused with "natural flavor" that is produced in a lab and not in the wild. It doesn't matter how small and cute or expensive the bottle is, or if a famous chef calls for it in a recipe. The little bit of truffle that you see in the bottle of oil or the ground up dried bits of truffle that you see in the salt are just there to make it look legitimate. Dried truffle, especially summer truffle, has the culinary value of sawdust. That being said, if you like truffle oil or truffle salt go ahead and use it. If however you insist on thinking that you're using real truffle then I might suggest that you stay up on December 24th, bake cookies, pour a glass of cold milk and wait for Santa Claus.

The best way to get truffle flavor into your popcorn would be butter. Truffle flavor infuses very nicely into warm melted butter. For optimum extraction of flavor, grate the truffle with a fine microplane. "Truffle salt" is certain to be just as artificially flavored as truffle oil.

1600$ per pound is $100 per ounce. A good "walnut" size truffle is around an ounce. The truffle is not at all "spent" by storing it with eggs. The perfume imparted into the eggs is essentially free and you can use the truffle in other dishes as well. Lightly scramble the eggs with a generous amount of butter.

A walnut sized truffle would be upwards of 30 grams, a good ounce for sure. At the current market price of $1600, that's about 100 dollars. One nice walnut sized fragrant black truffle can perfume a dozen or more eggs in a tightly sealed jar very effectively. It takes about 36 hours to acheive maximum flavor.

There are about half a dozen types of truffles foraged and sold, and plenty of confusion. In the end, there is only one white and one black species that really count. There are a few other legitimate but less interesting ones and the rest are gastronomically worthless, mostly used to cheat. Right now is the peak of "White" truffle season. We are enjoying a very good year after two recent dissappointing seasons. "Tuber magnatum pico", the true white truffle of Alba is the most expensive and sought after of all the truffles. It is found only in Italy, mainly in Piedmont and Umbria. It ripens in the fall and should be around well into December. Chefs are paying right around 1600 dollars a pound for good quality ones in the US right now. Larger truffles, at least "walnut" size and up are considered the best. There are a few really large truffles found every year, sometimes reaching over a pound. A good white truffle is very firm with incredible fragrance. It should linger on your fingers for 15 minutes after handling. The interior should be tannish and shot through with with whitish veins. For maximum flavor, truffles should be used as soon as possible although they retain some perfume for up to two weeks. When they start to soften and turn pink around the edges, your time is up. White truffles are invariably shaved raw onto warm food, their considerable magic is all in the aroma. There are other white truffles that can be confused with, or worse, substituted for real Tuber magnatum. Most common is the "tuber bianchetti", literally whitish truffle, which is very white on the inside and of obvious inferior quality. Insist on "tuber magnatum", read labels carefully to verify the species. The king of the black truffles is tuber melanosporum, commonly called the Perigord truffle or black winter truffle. They are not ripe yet and will come into season in December with the peak of flavor in January. They are found in a much wider range than the white truffle, both in France and Italy, even beyond, into Spain and the Balkans. In recent years they have crept up to about half the price of white truffles. A good white truffle season bodes well for the blacks to come. If you're eating tuber melanosporum right now it is preserved or frozen. The frozen is not bad at all if used wisely, but you still don't get the perfume of fresh. Perigord truffles are used both raw and cooked. Storing a fresh black truffle in a tightly sealed jar overnight with fresh eggs produces a miracle of nature as the eggs absorb the truffle perfume right through their shells. A jar of truffled eggs is one of my favorite gifts to give at Christmas. There is another fairly common black winter truffle, the "tuber brumale" or musky truffle. It is much less fragrant and flavorful than the true melanosporum. It is too often mixed up with true melanosporum, smell and verify every truffle you buy. If you are seeing fresh black truffles right now they are possibly very late or old summer truffles, "tuber aestivum". More likely they are "Burgundy" truffles, "tuber uncinatum", a fall truffle found in Burgundy and some other parts of Eastern France. Both of these are legitimate culinary truffles. They have black warty exteriors like their superior cousin, but a brown interior with white veins and a less intense more nutty flavor. They're going for around $200 a pound right now. There are American truffles grown in Oregon, both black and white. They are true truffles, but much less worthy species than their famous European cousins. They may be better than nothing, but I have yet to find them interesting. The scourge of truffledom is the prevalence of Chinese truffles in the market. There are two species of black truffles that have been increasingly imported from China over the last fifteen years or so, both essentially the same crap. Although they are truffles and they are black, they have zero culinary value. Their allure is their cheap price. They cost from 40 to 75 dollars a pound, and even that's too much unless you have larceny in your heart. Simply put, Chinese black truffles make it easy to cheat. Unscrupulous dealers and chefs call them "black truffles" adhering loosely to the letter but not the spirit of truffles. I have not yet seen a chef proudly touting Chinese truffles on a menu. You can put Chinese truffles and truffle oil in a dish to make it "truffled" but it's impossible to make it taste good enough for the true connoisseur. Lastly, there is the shame of truffle oil. Unless you've infused it yourself from real truffle, chances are you're looking at a chemically enhanced rip off. Chemists figured out how to synthesize many of the aromatic components in truffles some time ago. They even use them to train truffle dogs now. In my opinion, commercial truffle oil is a crutch used by those who are too cheap, lazy or dishonest to use the real thing in abundance. Truffle oil is offensively strong, leaves a heavy stain on the palate and ruins the rest of a meal for me. There is simply no substitute for a generous amount of great fresh truffle. There is no such thing as a truffle bargain, if you're getting a really great price, you're getting old or otherwise compromised truffles. Don't sweat the price, $50 or even $100 a pound is insignificant, given the price of truffles. Quality is everything. Buy them from a source you can trust and build a relationship. Your loyalty will be rewarded with the best truffles. I was recently given "The Little Book of Truffles" for my birthday. It's the best truffle book I've seen yet. ISBN # 2-0801-0627-9 About 10 bucks on Amazon Bon Appetit

I moved to the Bay Area 8 years ago because it is such a great place to live and cook. I have yet to be bored by the incredible bounty of fresh foods, the long list of great and diverse restaurants, or the devoted diners who will drive an hour or two for a good meal. I now get requests for sauce on the side about 3 times a year instead of 3 times an hour. Diners here try things they've never had before, just to find out. I enjoy Chez Panisse, Zuni and Oliveto as three very good and very different restaurants. I regularly crave food from the Slanted Door that you don't find anywhere else. Fleur de Lys, La Folie and Gary Danko would be grouped in the top Toques in any town. Sure, LA and New York have better sushi and I really miss that, but the Bay Area is pretty close to food nirvana. To blame Alice Waters for this "hegemony" is just absurd. Eating well in the Bay Area has grown way beyond Chez Panisse. There are only a few places on the planet where you can eat as well or better. The quality of Bay Area food culture is beyond dispute, it's almost harder to find bad bread than good! Chefs here continue to inspire the rest of the country and have been key players in the huge improvement of food nationwide over the last 25 years. The Bay Area has had it's share of "innovative" restaurants, but lets be realistic, for the most part that business model is pretty lame and they tend to die young in any town. For restaurants to thrive, they need consistent repeat business. How many times a year are you going to go to a fine dining "raw food" restaurant. I've eaten my share of "innovative" meals and have enjoyed many of them, nitrogen and all. Dry ice bubbling in your gazpacho is only interesting one time. Most foams are just silly. Ultimately, I would eat at Guy Savoy 20 times for every time I'd want to return to Marc Veyrat. Much of this modern food is like bad "experimental" art. I'd much rather have sauce right on the plate than served in a test tube rack or a syringe. I look for a great meal to be full of interesting, new, well executed dishes, but I don't need to contemplate the chefs "vision" two bites at a time, nor do I need to have my taste buds "challenged". For me innovation is about discovering and serving new things that nature provides, and finding the best of them, but not improving on them. It's also about embracing new techniques such as sous vide, but I work in a kitchen, not a mad scientists lab. I hope I've grown older and wiser over nearly 35 years of cooking. Some of my "innovative" dishes from the 70's make me cringe now. I'm content to let the seasons dictate what I have to work with. I don't need tomatoes in January, there are plenty of other things to do. It's exciting to realize there's still so much more to discover in the world of food. I strive to offer my customers interesting, delicious, difficult to find foods that they would not cook at home. There's no better place to do that than the Bay Area. Alice Waters is in part responsible for that, and I thank her.

Anyone know the latin name? or where it is cultivated?

What is a Burgundy Black Truffle?

I just got my first of the year this week and am happy to report that the quality seems far better than any last year. They're only large walnut size, it is still pretty early, and I paid 1620 a lb from Danko. Summer rains in Europe are very helpful for the truffle crop in the fall. Many of the high end purveyors are getting in the act this week and next. Bon Appetit

Opus One has a great tour, but you have to call weeks ahead and make a reservation. You can walk in anytime if you only want a tasting. You'll need appointments at Nickel and Nickel or Caymus too. They're all terrific.

I'd love to do a taste test some day. I haven't tried any of the most-humane Label Rouge foie gras (at least not knowingly; I've only known about it explicitly for the last year or so), but it would be interesting to compare it side-by-side to HVFG, SFG, a Canadian foie, and an "industrial" French producer. Obviously some of you have done portions of this, but I haven't. Something to look forward to ← I've been doing the taste test for about 20 years now. Though all of the foie gras is delicious, when cooked double blind side by side they are remarkably different. I only use "A" livers for this, the "b"s are a waste of time. Some brands "melt" more than others which is a food cost issue for some chefs. In general the HVFG melts less, has a barely more livery taste and a bit more chalky texture. The SFG (raised by Guillermo and marketed by Grimaud) tends to melt more but has a sweeter flavor with a more luxurious mouth feel. The winner last time for me was the Artisan "Methode a l'Ancienne". It is produced and sold directly by Guillermo at the same farm, in a different barn. These birds are fed the cooked corn recipe they used in the beginning and it gives the liver terrific flavor and texture. Too bad they're not currently raising Muscovy ducks. The Muscovy livers are the best of all, but more costly and difficult to produce than Moulard. Still tasty, but not nearly as good in comparison, are the smaller factory raised livers. These are from ducks kept in small confinement cages and fed on a quick 9 day cycle that produces a liver good enough for canning but unlikely to be used in a fine kitchen. These are always imported, to my knowledge none are grown this way in the US. These lesser grade, much cheaper livers put a lot of price pressure on the 3 domestic farms.

Did you notice if it had a screw/worm attached to the crank to push the food down? I've heard of that kind of apparatus, though I've not seen it except in pics. (btw, your account was certainly the most amusing of the however many stories of visits I read while researching my piece) ← That sounds like the device that Sonoma Foie Gras used when they first started their original farm in the eighties. They brought them from Southern France where they had studied Foie Gras production. It's essentially a funnel with a long flexible tube and a soft teflon tip. There is a screw in the tube which moves the corn through the tube as it is turned. A scoop of corn mush is dumped in the top, the handler slips the tube down the ducks throat and turns the crank(or triggers a motor) to release the corn mix and evenly fill the neck as the tube is pulled up and removed. With practice it can be done very quickly and with virtually no distress to the bird. The same handler feeds the birds every day and they quickly learn to trust that they will not be harmed, making the process even easier. SFG now uses a state of the art "dosing" machine. It is quite the contraption, a big mechanised cart that is computer controlled. The feed mix is stirred and fed into a tube. The computer controls the amout of food delivered to each bird. The dose is increased daily through the gavage cycle. A pneumatic piston has replaced the screw and the tube is rigid metal with a rounded tip. The handler gathers the duck, slips the tube down the neck, and triggers the dose as the tube is pulled up and removed, evenly filling the neck as with the funnel technique. This is a faster more efficient method than is possible with the older crank funnels. It takes just a few seconds per duck, and there is no distress involved. As soon as they are fed, they flap their wings in a sign of contentment and settle in to digest, or waddle around the pen with their colleagues.