Everyone has heard of truffles of course (the mushroom kind, not the chocolate kind).  I have to confess, I have never actually tasted one.  Nevertheless, I always wanted to, because hey, they must be good, right?  Anything that costs $500 per pound must be good!

Last week I learned that I may yet be in luck.  It turns out that there are several species of truffles which are native to the Pacific Northwest, and that they may in fact be a lot more common than anyone originally thought.  The two main native species are the Oregon white truffle and the Oregon black truffle.  Oregon whites are found in springtime, around May and June.  Oregon blacks can be found in - guess what! - the month of November.

To find an Oregon black truffle, you need to find their symbiotic tree, a Douglas fir.  The truffles will be growing between the layer of duff (needles and such) and the actual ground proper.  Hunt for them by using a rake to scratch around, looking for something that apparently resembles a clod of dirt or (if you ask me) a cat turd.  And that presumably smells tasty.

How to know if you have found a clod of dirt, a cat turd, or an Oregon black truffle?  If you cut it open, it should look mushroom-y inside.  The smell should also be a tip-off.  Truffles produce something remarkably similar to hog androgen, which is why lady pigs are used to hunt for them.

Although they smell like the scent of love to a sow, to humans the truffle smells like "a freshly opened can of creamed corn" or like "like fruit, meat, mushrooms, incense, cheese, licorice, good wine and sometimes pleasant herbs." Or "all that is dark and alluring about the human body and soul." Or maybe like "earth, tree roots and old cheese"

Funny, but this isn't really helping me any.  

Add to which the classic warning for the amateur thinking about hunting mushrooms: don't. As one website warns, you can mistake the small button stage of a poisonous mushroom for a truffle, and die.  Literally die.  Are you willing to risk death for a truffle?  I'm not sure that I am, but if the weather ever clears, I might give it a shot.

Meanwhile, the truffle's hoity toity exclusive image is being tarnished by some Commie in Tennessee, who found a way to raise the truffles reliably.  The truffle's crazy price has been sustained by its rarity - unlike any other common vegetable, the truffle still has to be hunted in the wild, using dogs and pigs to locate its source.  

GQ has recently published an article about just such a man, who claims to have unlocked the secret to farming truffles, and is poised to set the truffle world afire.  This is the black Perigord truffle, the king of the truffle world,

Truffles live in concert with host plants, dwelling among their surface roots.  The relationship between the truffle and its host is still somewhat mysterious, but they have definite preferences.  Almost every tree has a symbiotic truffle (or false truffle) associated with it.  Although the truffle hides its mystery well - or could that just be the smell of marketing wafting past?