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Find us at heritageradio network.org. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking It True's coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 from the American American American American. Where am I today, Stuzz? Bushwick.
Where? Brooklyn. Well, you forgot to say Roberta's Peach. Well, that's a given. This didn't go well.
You're supposed to like you got a bub-bub-bh-bush. There's no other place. You gotta do the bubba bub. Okay, so uh we have uh as usual in the studio, Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, which you referred to in a question as the hamorous. Did you like that?
Did you enjoy the hamorous? Mm-hmm. Yeah? Mm-hmm. And uh we got uh Dave in the booth.
How you doing, Dave? I'm good, how are you? Good. Call in. Oh, by the way, we have a special guest on the phone, not gonna bring him on quite yet, uh, because I gotta tell you where who he is.
Although actually, you know what? Are you there? Uh Professor, are you there? He's been waiting. Hello.
Hello. Hey, so we have uh special guest today, uh Charles. Now Dr. Charles. Now, you're he pronounces his last name like 70s disco style, Le Fever.
Even though it's written Frenchie style, Lefebvre, but you go by Le Fever, which I think is like a thousand times better. What do you think, Stuz? Yeah. Is that true? Yeah.
Le Fever is the American. Yeah, yeah, seriously American, which I you know everyone here knows. I appreciate. And uh Professor uh Lafever or Doctor Lefever is the world's authority on uh specifically on Oregon truffles, but all things truffle. He is a uh you're a mycologist, correct?
That is correct. Is there a subspecialty within mycology that deals with uh truffles? Oh no, there's not a name for it. You could make one up though, truffleologist. Truffleologist, ectomycorizolologist.
So uh so anyway, so uh how do you like to be referred to, by the way? How what what do you want me to call you? Uh Charles the slide. Okay, Charles. So uh call in all of your truffle related questions.
Now, as I said, he he actually has a a company where he grows uh well he cultivates uh European um tubermelanosporums in Oregon, as well as collects uh the local domestic Oregon truffle varieties and searches all over the country and the world for new interesting, unused, whether they taste good or whether they don't, uh, varieties of truffles. So you can call in any, any and all truffle related or probably any uh mushroom or mycological uh questions to 718 497-2128. That's 718-497 uh 2128. So let's get let's just get started right away and let's talk about kind of why you just give the the um by the way, our uh our listeners here, the cooking issues crowd is not afraid of uh of uh technical jargon or uh complexities or anything. So you don't need to like hold back or anything.
Why don't you just basically explain what a truffle is? What is a truffle? Well, truffle's a mushroom. And but I should say, unlike other mushrooms, they depend on animals to disperse their spores. So where mushrooms will disperse their spores in the wind, truffles depend on animals finding them, digging them up, eating them for their dispersal.
So that's kind of key to the whole understanding of why truffles are expensive. Because they, you know, imagine they're they're hidden in the forests out in the wilderness. It's cold, it's wet, it's dark, and they have to somehow convince some animal to come find them. So they just uh they use every trick they can to attract animals from as far away as they can to eat them. And uh it it explains why they're expensive.
Now, so so let's so this is where they're underground and they're like the the fruiting body of these uh these funguses that fungi that uh live in close proximity to certain tree roots, right? That's right. Yeah, they're in a in a mycorrhizal symbiosis with the trees. It's both the fungus and the tree need each other. Now and the hard part about it, right, is is that these truffles they they only gr they don't grow with the tree for its entire life, right?
Don't you have to find like like a specific like this particular one likes to live in trees that are between like 15 and 50 years old? Isn't it like all weird and crazy like this? Yeah, there's there is ecological succession on the roots of an individual tree. So yes, uh uh different truffles live it within a different window of time on the roots of the trees. Fortunately, almost all truffles live on very, very young trees, which is why we can cultivate them.
So, like how long? Like so like like let's say you're gonna go uh like oak hazel, not like European style, like uh like what are we looking at for the age of the optimum age for a truffling up a tree? Well, the uh among my customers, the very youngest trees that have produced truffles have been three years old. Huh, cool. And so you actually do you use are you sell uh like trees with uh that have been inoculated with the spores or no?
That's correct, yes. Just so you know, whenever I say spore, Nastasia, my co-hors co here, like she detests the word spore. Maybe you can make her not hate the word spore so much. You can think of a spore as a seed. Yeah.
Serves the same function in the life cycle as the organism that a seed does. Yeah, all right. Well, tech technically obviously not correct, but makes her feel better, so all right. Uh but the um So now here's here's my other uh thing. So one of your well um I don't even know where to start 'cause I got so much to uh so much to deal with here on uh on the truffles.
So let's go back to this smell. So all truffles, because they all live underground. By the way, how far underground are we talking? Oh, anywhere from actually on the surface where you can see them to three or four feet deep. Three or four feet?
Can a dog smell three or four feet deep? Yes, they can. The world's largest Italian light truffles live found three feet deep. I wonder how it tasted. Is there any difference in taste between depth?
Is there any sort of like in a particular region? So assuming there's a terroir for a region which I'm gonna have you talk about in a minute, uh, is there any relationship between size and depth and flavor? I don't know that there's any connection between size and flavor or depth and flavor, but there could be. There's certainly a huge variation in flavor from one truffle to the next. Yeah, because it's and it's it's it's likely that the host tree has an impact on their flavor and then and the region very easily could.
But there may be more variability from one truffle to the next, even within a place than there are between places. Really? So like uh uh tuber melanosporum, the perigord truffle, the black truffle. Uh so if you were to take it, I'm sure you have, I don't know, but if you take uh one that you've harvested in um in Oregon, and you were to somehow take one that was harvested in uh France and then fly to some point in the middle so that they each were out of the dirt for the exact same length of time and they were the same, you know, relative size and whatever, uh, would there be a big difference in flavor between the two that were grown in different areas, assuming they were on the same kind of tree substrate? So far, nobody has has shown that there is a difference between truffles grown in the natural habitat versus truffles grown outside the natural habitat.
But of course, in different regions of Europe where truffles are grown, um, there's there's a perceived difference. Like the truffles from Paragord are the most expensive, where those from Spain are a little less expensive. Even and and is but so with something that's this expensive, you would assume that people have figured out tests for faking it, right? Because there's a lot of money involved. Is it but in other words, like is it one of these things where it's very hard to tell the difference between where they come from, and so you can have people selling one item as another and and provenance just becomes something you have to kind of take on faith or absolutely.
I think probably uh the majority of truffles that are coming from parigord are actually harvested elsewhere. Huh. And well, but the then now the thing is is that like a lot of things that are faked, right, like wines, uh you know, there's a difference between um fooling an expert and fooling uh you know a relative novice, right? So when you're faking an old Bordeaux, you just have to get close to faking an orb old Bordeaux, and you're gonna 99% of the people aren't going to be able to tell the difference. Um but sometimes experts can, sometimes they can't, and it has to be done, you know, with actual analysis.
But are you saying that even experienced expert truffle eaters and cookers and preparers probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference between, let's say, a Spanish uh tubermelanosporum and an actual French one? I think that they probably could not reliably tell where the truffle had come from. But there's one possible exception to that, and that's with the Italian white truffles. They're uh their aroma, their shape, and their color does vary from one place to another. So truffles from certain regions are more are flatter, others are rounder.
So that might be one clue for the next for you, but do you identify do you attribute that to local conditions or to basically like almost I mean they're not cultivars because it's not cultivated, but varieties, in other words. I think it's more like local conditions, how compacted the soil is, how rocky the soil is, whether the truffle has to grow around roots and rocks and things. Yeah, okay. So now now when it comes to uh truffles, right? No matter what they are, they all have uh I mean, how do you describe they're all funky, right?
So it's like s almost they're not the majority of them are supposed to be found by what? By rodents, things like rodents? You know, uh yeah, the the definition of the word truffle is that they depend on animals to eat their or to disperse their spores. The term animal is very broad, so it can be flies or slugs or rodents or mammals. Uh they're even examples of birds dispersing them.
Huh. But I mean, but the m but in other words, like they're not shooting for carnivores specifically. So even though dogs are carnivores, they happen to have good noses, they're not aiming at carnivores. Right. So carnivores are the one group of animals that do not eat truffles.
They're not the one, but they're one major group of animals that does not eat truffles. So why is it that I mean a dogs presumably are good just because their sniffers are good and you can train them to sniff out anything? Uh by the way, you train people how to train their dogs, right? We do. Yeah.
You sent me some, he actually he sent me some information on training. I was able to train uh my my black lab, the my smaller dog hasn't got taken to training yet in general, but I was able to train major big dog, my lab, to find uh truffle oil anywhere in my yard. But I wasn't able to find any tuber uh any truffles on my on my property anywhere. But my uh professor also sent me, or Charles also sent me some uh Oregon truffles, which we'll talk about in a minute, and I was able to get major fairly easily to go find the shavings from the outside of it all over my apartment. So it's not like it's not rocket science.
If you have a good dog with a good nose who can follow basic commands, you can train them to go look for truffles on your property, yes? That's that's right, it's very easy. Yeah. Um anyway, so we'll get back to that in a minute. But my my main question is is that why would something that smells animally attract uh non carnivores, herbivores?
It seems strange. If I was going to attract an herbivore, if I want to attract flies, I get, right? You want to have some sort of like weird funky animal carrying s something, right? Some process of uh something doing something funky. But with uh with like a mouse, like what the heck?
Like, why wouldn't it give off some sort of like delicious carrot smell or some sort of like something that you think would attract an herbivore? Why does it give off these kind of animal notes? I mean, in other words, my point is are the animals looking for something other than food? Boom, boom, boom, but then they and they find it, they're like, I can eat this thing and they eat it? I mean, what do you think?
Yeah, I I think all those things. Um I think it's very likely that the truffles and the animals, the dispersed ones have co-evolved. And that different truffles tune their aroma to the physiology of the animal they're trying to attract. So different truffles are wildly different from each other. Some of them probably do smell like turrets, others smell like fruit.
Uh some smell like juicy fruit gum. Do you like do you like juicy fruit gum? Well, you know, it's interesting when you find it out in the in the dry forest up a tree line in some beautiful setting. It's an it's an amazing experience to smell juicy fruit gum gum coming out of the ground. Fair, fair.
Now, so s now here's the point that uh I think one of your main uh points, and by the way, you you guys should know anyone who's near uh Portland or you know, near that area, next week is the uh Oregon Truffle Festival that uh actually you host, uh Charles, that I'm gonna be going to along with Peter Meehan from Lucky Peach and Harold McGee. We're all going together and we're gonna go out and find truffles and cook with truffles and eat with truffles, and it's uh it's a grand old time. And I'm we actually get to meet in in person. Um but um so when you're talking Oregon truffles, one of the things that you get kind of everyone if let's everyone's biased and they really like the you know, the white, like the um, you know, classic uh tuber magnatum white truffle from Italy, or the Perigor, the uh black truffle tubermelanosporum, and everyone's like, these are the best, everything else blows. And um partly, I think one of the your points is is that most of the other truffles are not harvested in a way that is going to produce good truffles, which I'll have you talk about in a minute.
But I think the other thing is that people don't allow for difference, right? So they can just be these other truffles, like the Oregon truffles that we're gonna talk about, they can just be different. They don't have to be the same thing, right? No, they're wildly different. The Oregon white truffle smells like pineapple, where the Italian white truffle smells like garlic.
They're wildly different from each other and they're used in different ways. Right. And I actually find in my experience that people's preferences are kind of set by the truffles that they experience first. Right. By the way, Nastassi, are you a big truffle person?
You like truffles? I like white ones. I don't like black ones. You don't like black ones? Yeah, she's well, Nastasia only likes either, either she she just wants the most expensive possible, the most expensive possible one.
And by the way, I brought I have with me the left uh what's left of my uh stash of truffles. We're gonna shave them on top of the pizza that we have here at lunch with the birdus, but I bought the worst, like the crappiest truffle shaver. I went to freaking uh Sirla Tab and bought this, and it's made in Italy, but it's just garbage. It's just the garb most garbage truffle shaver. By the way, while we're at it, before we get into this, are you a believer in um in trimming off the outside uh with a with a pairing knife, or are you a a rubbing person, or are you how how how do you like to do it?
I think actually there's an aesthetic appeal to having the rind around the the edge of the slice. I keep it on. And then but do you like then do you rub it or do you don't wash them, right? I mean, what do you do? Oh, we do wash them, yeah.
So you don't want the soil on the truffle. Right, so you just wash pat dry and then shave? Yes, exactly. All right. Um so you're not a believer in paring them down.
Do you think you're throwing stuff away, or you just like that you like that just like that line around it that shows the difference in color of the outside of it? Yeah, that that line on the outside is attractive. But you don't think it's actually a quality uh criterion? Uh truffle that's the size that'll fit through a shaver that's nice and round so that you can get that entire line actually makes that a more attractive truffle. Right.
Okay. Now, um now the the two main truffles that you guys are are doing, first of all, one of them, the Oregon black truffle isn't isn't a tuber species, it's a different species, right? That's right. It's Lutangium. And then is that is it like a super closely related or no?
Uh they are fairly closely related, um, as are the desert truffles from North Africa. They're all in uh but I noticed when you small line. When you cut open the Oregon uh black truffle, the winter black truffle, whatever you want to call it, it the the black lines on the inside aren't as distinct as they are on like a Milanosporum. It's like much more, it's like gray and cream instead of like like blackish gray and cream. Would you would you say that's accurate or no?
Well, it varies. Uh and actually the the appearance of the interior of the truffle is is a good indicator of the quality of the truffle. So the more contrast there is, the more black and white they are. That's a more mature truffle. And the same is true for the Oregon black truffles.
But instead of marbling on the interior, the Oregon black truffles are a kind of salt and pep pepper speckled black and white. Right. So maybe that's what I was uh focusing on. Now the also the Oregon black uh truffle, it seemed to have kind of like uh a lot of more kind of roasty soy kind of notes than uh than the white one did, which as you say is more has more kind of fruity, not in a bad way, but like s solvent the high notes, right? So the white one is more like a high note truffle and the other one's more like a roasty thing.
Do you ever use them together, compliment each other? We do use them together often. Um but actually you're telling me that the that you're getting these roasty notes from the black truffle tells me a lot about that truffle. The black truffles have an enormous variety of aromas that they can produce and when they're their youngest, they're very, very fruity and sweet. And they develop more savory notes later on.
Well I actually took some of them that smelled sweeter and I made an ice cream out of the I actually thought I was going to like the black ice cream a lot more than the white one and the white one was more animal also the white one had more kind of classic mushroom notes to the taste than uh I mean had those these like truffle notes as well but it also has the white uh which I guess so what's the what's the species there? It's uh uh tuber organace right the um the like that one along with the truffle notes had some classic mushroom notes at least when it was made into an ice cream me do you agree with that or no? Well yes and actually the the way you prepare the truffle uh can influence whether or not you produce that mushroom aroma when you um it so when you first said that it it made me think that you had grated the truffle and shredded it. Uh and the white I did. The the uh in the ice cream for the white one I yes I did.
That that mushroomy note is a product of the tissue damage from grading the truffle. Huh so if you don't want that you just leave it whole or or just um create less surface area. Just use a single slice something like that. Yeah, I sliced the heck out of it and then macerated it in cream and egg yolk and then spun it into an ice cream. Yeah.
Uh and I just there's an interesting byproduct to this, which is uh that mushroomy uh compound is one octane three all, just the smell of mushroom. And it uh is not present in a fresh truffle. And it only it only is produced by the truffle when the truffle is damaged. And it's uh most noticeable when the truffle is frozen. And it's it starts it's an unattractive aroma and something you don't really want it.
Really? I don't know. I like the taste of mushrooms. I can understand why you're saying if it's an indicator that someone did something they shouldn't have, right? Then I can see how it's uh it's kind of like it's like any trained olive oil uh person hates any sort of fusty or like any sort of like fermented notes in their in their olive oil, whereas people who haven't been trained to hate it don't hate it.
You know what I mean? So it's it's uh yes. Uh so in other words, when people, when they're buying um, like for instance, expensive white truffles and they're testing to see whether they've been frozen or not, what they're looking for is a mushroom note. Oh, it's obvious when a truffle has been frozen. It's soft, it loses its integrity, the marbling is gone in the interior.
Uh frozen truffle is ruined. Is there any way to is there any good way to freeze a truffle? Like in other words, like if I were to do it quickly, like in liquid nitrogen, can I preserve the the structure of it without ruining it, or is it just hosed entirely? Well, that would be interesting to try. Uh uh, I imagine it's the ice crystals forming in the interior that uh damages the tissue and invokes that enzymatic reaction to produce the one octane three L.
Right. Well, truffles are quite light. Yeah, but you can't freeze them that quickly because they're so light. I mean, that's the thing. It's like I imagine that it's fairly poor conductance through a truffle because they have a lot of air in them, so I wouldn't imagine that you could get as rapid a freezing as you would like.
So in other words, so when you freeze an egg yolk uh slowly, you denature the proteins to the extent that the egg yolk remains solid after it thaws. If you liquid nitrogen freeze an egg yolk, then uh when you thaw it again, it goes runny because the it ha it hasn't had the it didn't have the time to complex as it was going down as it was freezing, and so it comes back basically to its raw state again. Uh but you know, egg yolks can be egg yolks are very high in water and dense, and so it's fairly easy to freeze them fairly quickly. I imagine a truffle, which is much much lighter than water, uh would um probably not be as easy to freeze quickly. Although we could test it.
Hell, we could test it. Yeah. That'd be interesting. The one thing though I I think it's important to know is that the the value of a truffle is the aroma itself, not not the body of the the organism. So if there's if you capture the aroma in something else, that's the most authentic uh authentic way to store a truffle.
At least to store the experience of the truffle. So to capture that aroma in some kind of fatty food, say eggs or cheese or meat. Right. Um is the best way to store it rather than freezing it. I tell you, they that my whole refrigerator smelled like them when when uh the stuff was in there, and and we've become accustomed to it now in the studio, but we have them here in the studio inside of their plastic containers, and they still the aroma, the aroma goes right through a plastic deli container and like into I mean there's you know fills up the whole the whole area.
Now, but to go back to the aroma and like how much stays versus cooking, so the argument against uh what's the the uh the truth de chine, the Chinese truffle. Which truffle is that? Um sorry, the bad connection. You you said what the difference between the No, no, like what what what truffle variety? So it w one time when I was in France I went to uh Rongi's which is their market and I was talking to their truffle guys uh and then they they showed me these like basically these Chinese truffles which they call truff de chin and then the guy said to me he's like they smell fine when they're you know in this box he says but they lose everything when you use them and so they're relatively useless.
So what what about the first of all what species is the is that is the Chinese truffle that they're selling and secondly what about this like uh they they don't maintain their odor when they're being used um in a culinary sense and is there just strictly like more odorant to stay around in like a melanosporum or uh magnatum than there is in some of these other species that Chinese truffles are interesting. It's a complex of species there's vast diversity in China that's people are discovering right now. So there are any number of species that could be the most likely species is tuber indicum which is very closely related to the French black tubermelanosporum. Uh but the reason I think the primary reason that they have such a bad reputation and their prices are so low is because of the way they're harvested. They're used they're harvested with rakes like potatoes and another difference between a truffle and a mushroom is that a truffle needs to be ripe in order to have its culinary value.
So you have to let them mature. And each truffle ripens at a different time over a three month period, typically. So an indiscriminate way of harvesting them produces mostly immature truffles that have no culinary value. So that's the primary problem. So and you say that's the same problem with Oregon truffles, right?
The majority of domestic truffles that are harvested are not harvested using uh dogs or other form of animals smelling, right? Right. Right. That is the that is the main reason why organ truffles historically has been inexpensive and unappreciated. And and so you're on kind of like uh a mission, you and your cohorts are on a mission to basically say, look at um we're gonna sell these ones that are harvested by dogs.
Now uh not harvested by, but cer found by, hunted by uh by dogs. But you know, one of the problems I've noticed with lots of things in this country, for instance, uh country ham is to comes to mind because it's something I've worked with a lot, is that when you don't have a an easy way for consumers to know what they're purchasing, right? It's hard to get the extra value on top of um uh uh what you're doing. So, you know, and I I was talking to the country ham producers, I was like, look at you know, country ham is hugely widely varying qualities, uh, and you know, the definition is basically just based on a particular procedure. Do you have some sort of label or consortium or some sort of way that a consumer could very easily tell, you know, this this one, other than assuming that they have knowledge and they can smell it, and they'd be like, this one has a great aroma and this one is relatively useless.
Uh is there some sort of like way that you guys are trying to get together to uh let the consumer know what's what? There's a lot of conversation about that, but it hasn't happened. There's no certification yet. But it is obvious. The difference is obvious.
Anyone can tell. It's the difference between a truffle that has no aroma and a truffle that has lots of aroma. Right, but someone could someone can have a jar full of rice and truffles at their place, have like one or two ones that are decent that happen to be decent, and it stinks up the whole truffle jar, and then you buy the one, you know, that got raked out and you're hosed, right? I mean, like, you know, you take it home and you're ruined. That's right.
You have to sniff every single truffle. Each truffle needs to have a strong aroma of its own. Just smelling the truffles in a jar is not good enough. Now, how long like like uh so how long do you think these suckers last? Like how long does one of these last versus is there any difference in keeping time for an Oregon truffle versus for like uh one of the European varieties or no?
Oh well, there probably is, and and and it really depends on what characteristic they're looking at. The European truffle will stay intact longer, but it loses its aroma just as fast. So in terms of their their real value, their culinary value, the shelf lives are comparable and it's just a few days long. And by the time the truffle is a week old, it's lost most of its aroma. Even even under refrigeration.
Even in refrigeration, uh and regardless of what species it is, but there are exceptions. I mean, we've we've managed to uh keep truffles in great condition for ten days or two weeks, it can happen. And the storage conditions make a huge difference in how long the truffle lasts. What's the optimum condition? Well, uh a truffle is alive and it needs oxygen, you need to let them breathe.
Uh but if you give it too much oxygen, it'll expire more quickly. So it's uh it's regulating uh the oxygen and CO2 in the container where you're storing them that will extend the the shelf life. So we keep them in like a Tupperware container in the refrigerator with the paper towel underneath to absorb excess moisture. That's another thing. You need to keep the surface of the truffle dry.
Or it'll just start to like uh just start to go soft and crazy, right? Right. You may have noticed that with your black truffles, they got wet looking. You have to blot them dry every day. Some got wet looking and some didn't.
Yeah, it's like you know, you couldn't tell. You know what I mean? Um but com like commercially, is there like can you can extend it by tightly controlling the oxygen in the environment or no? You know, one of one of our speakers at the Oregon Truffle Festival had had a patent on an edible film that just uh limited the oxygen supply to the truffle and extended the shelf life. When you say extended though, but extended it at maximum quality, or is it like extended it at okay quality?
In other words, are you saying that like you're gonna get the perfect experience or you're gonna get like 80% of the experience once you've extended the shelf life? Well, that's a great question. I don't know the answer. Yeah. Um so when you're talking like you only have a couple of days, like how fast are these things getting to market?
In other words, can you enjoy these things on the East Coast, or is this like a you know West Coaster done kind of a situation? I do think truffles are the kind of food that it's it's their best experience to at the source. So it's the kind of food you need to travel for. But we can definitely get a good quality truffle to the east coast in a in a day. But is that something you're interested in?
Are you interested in extending the range, or are you more interested in promoting tourism to Oregon? Oh, both. We'd we'd love to have a thriving truffle industry in New York. What do you think about the pecan truffle? You like those things?
We definitely invite people to come to Oregon to experience hunting them and experiencing them for source. There's one interesting phenomenon. When you're using a dog to find the Oregon white truffles in particular, there's this tough of minky aroma that comes out of the grounds that only lasts a few minutes. Right when you get it out, you mean? I'm sorry?
Right when you get it out? Right when you get it out. It's this beautiful aroma that only lasts a very, very short time. Huh. Can you capture it in alcohol?
You might be able to. Uh a lot of the aroma compounds are soluble in alcohol. What do you what do you think uh before before we uh before I forget, what do you think of the pecan truffle? You're a competitor down uh down east there. Do you like those things or no?
Well, actually, uh we have a customer who's the first uh commercial grower of pecan truffles on inoculated trees. And that's in Southeast Georgia. So no, they're not competitors. We we actually sell pecan trees with pecan truffles on their roots. I think the pecan truffles are very good.
The smell is like malt balls. It's not particularly powerful, but it is attractive. Huh. Yeah, okay. So you're not you're you're like you're not a huge fan, is what I'm hearing.
You're like, you're like, they look good from a mycologist's point of view, but not your favorite culinary truffle. I think they're great. I I you'll never hear me express a preference from one truffle over another. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, my last name's Arnold, and they found a truffle in the Arnold Arboretum.
And uh the I don't know whether you I don't I don't know whether you know um the the person, Matthew Smith, who wrote the article, yeah. And he said that, and I I'd like to get your opinion on this, because you when I spoke on the phone with you uh a couple months ago, you said that there's undoubtedly truffle species in Connecticut where I am. And uh he writes, New England's acidic soil, harsh winters, and year-round precipitation are in quotes not optimal for truffles. At least not the European varieties that people usually eat. Is that true that like uh New England soil, like we're gonna have them, but probably not delicious ones, or do you disagree with his assessment?
I do disagree with this assessment. I think it's uh certainly the winters are cold, too cold for in the northeast too cold for tubermelanosporum. But there's still the tuber borkee that was found in the Arnold Arborinum. Uh this you know introduced species. Um and so we ha some of those European truffles are already living and fruiting in the Northeast.
Um and then they're they're native species. There's tuber canaliculatum and tuber leonia that both live in the northeast naturally. You actually inoculated some trees up in uh in uh at Stone Barnes, right? Well, you're right. We shipped some trees with uh tuber Stephen, the Burgundy truffle.
And how did they work out or no? Are they growing? That was they were planted just a year ago, and uh I'd love to go visit them. I don't know how they're doing. Listen, if you ever come out to uh in the Connecticut area, I'll take you know, come up and I want you to find whatever truffles we have here.
You have an open invite to come find whatever like I say, we have uh hemlocks, we have uh three or four varieties of hickory, three or four varieties of oak, mostly of the red slash black oak group. Uh so you know, anyway, they are any of any of those trees, in fact, all of those trees do have truffles moving on their roots. I would love to find truffles in Central Park. I know they're there. Well, why not you should do it?
Do you ever come to New York? You you know I uh you could bring my dog to. I actually just heard a lecture about a uh a mycologist in in New Hampshire doing a study on truffles, you know, listen, next time you's finding unbelievable numbers of truffles in New York, we'll take my dog up to Central Park and you can uh, you know, show him where to show him where to look out. Um I I should be clear, there are hundreds of species of truffles and only a few that have culinary value. Well, that's the thing, like so when you say only if you have culinary value, they all have some sort of smell, right?
Obviously, or they wouldn't be found. But you're saying a lot of the smells are unpleasant, or they're just not strong enough to have uh culinary value? Some of them are unpleasant. Uh some of them are are really offensive, horrible smells. They're kinds of things that flies would love.
Uh others are uh really interesting smells like the juicy fruit gum, but that's not a truffle that I think would ever have any culinary value. Why not like why not like uh I mean people like candy cap mushrooms because they're sweet, right? And they have like those candy kind of aromas, like why not? In other words, like m my whole point is is that you shouldn't try to have a uh you shouldn't try to have something pretend that it's something else, right? But like maybe it has some sort of use on its own, no?
Oh, absolutely. Oh, there's there's lots of truffles that are unrelated to the to the tuber species and the tantium and desert truffles. They're fundamentally different that also have wonderful aromas. They g it definitely pair well with a lot of foods. So what's the price by what's the going price for the Oregon truffles?
Well, that's interesting, and now that we're we've introduced dogs, we've seen a price increase by about a factor of ten. So the price is bifurcated. The bulk of the truffles are still harvested with rakes and their prices are are low. You can probably buy either species for a hundred and fifty dollars a pound. And how much is like a a golf ball size uh black truffle?
How much is that weigh? How many to the pound? Oh, let's say it's that's a tenth of a pound. Okay, so that's ten bucks. With the dog harvested truffles are are selling for prices comparable to tumor Milano spore.
So it's ten dollars for a raked golf ball and it's a hundred dollars for a hunted golf ball. Uh that would be right. All right, cool. Um I look forward to uh meeting you and we'll talk more about it. Uh no one called in their their uh truffle by the way, why actually do have a truffle.
We have a truffle related question? Uh let's let's do it. Let's do it. Are they on the phone or they're on uh on the line. All right.
Uh caller, you're on the air with uh with uh Dr. Uh La Fever. Hey David's Alvin Schultz in uh Houston. How are you? Nice.
So uh so Charles, I'll let you know. Alvin Schultz, friend of ours uh in Texas believes that Oregon truffles are uh this is a show parlance, you'll have to excuse us, enemies of quality. Uh and so Alvin, go ahead. So so I've been I've been rethinking that statement. It might have been harsh.
I think I would agree with you on uh I think it's a different product, right? And I guess my question for the doctor is uh, you know, how do you find a good reputable Oregon truffle dealer that's harvesting with dogs versus the uh the poorly harvested product? My my experience with Oregon truffles in the past is not great, especially compared to the European uh counterparts that I think all all dog animal harvested. Charles, did you hear that? Uh d I it's really rough to hear it.
But I think I understood the question is how do you find a a good truffle dealer who uh uses the dog harvested truffles because the college experiences that organ truffles really just don't perform as well as the European species. Correct. Yeah, specifically for a reputable dealer for Oregon truffles. Yeah, reputable dealer for Oregon truffles. You got anyone?
Uh I do. Um and uh I know them personally, not the name of their company. So uh uh there's a harvester named John Getz, G-E-T-Z, who I would refer to anybody. Um he's exclusively uses dogs. And it it's it goes beyond that, not just using dogs for the quality control, but then grading the truffles to the point where what you're receiving is all good.
So that's his company is one that I can recommend there in Florence, Oregon. G G E T Z an individual. Have you tried rotovapping truffle at all? Me? No.
Yeah. No, I haven't done any distillation work with it because my my rotovap uh since we closed the bar down, it's been p is packed. Uh but you know, I'd love to try that sometime. Have you uh professor, have you done distillation work with truffles? Well, you certainly could.
Uh the thing is the truffle is continuously giving off more and more aroma. So you don't really want to kill it. If you want to capture that aroma, uh you might not want to heat it or freeze it or do anything. You want to leave it intact and healthy and alive, and somehow just capture the the stream of gas coming off of it. Well we can distill at basically we can distill it at room temperature in a rotovap.
So we do vacuum distillation and you're not heating it at all. The question is, is would the would the bath and so Alman what I would do is I would basically uh put like an excluder almost and put the truffle in between the alcohol vapor and the um put the truffle between the alcohol vapor and you know, in other words, have your alcohol in your distillation flask and then have like a bump flask there that you shove the truffle into and then do the evaporation with the alcohol going through it so you could capture this stuff without actually having to bathe the truffle in alcohol which would might you know hose it down but I would remember so so uh Charles you'll correct me if I'm wrong like how long can it survive in an oxygen depleted environment because rotovap is basically in a vacuum so it's going to be in a vacuum environment for I don't know 35 40 minutes at at the minimum is that going to totally kill it right there or will it last for a while in a vacuum environment you wouldn't want to subject it to so much vacuum that it damages the tissue but I think it could survive for a while in that in those conditions. You might need to periodically refresh the oxygen to keep the truffle alive so it continues to produce its aroma. But I think it would be fine to do that. So Dave you're saying you're saying pass the vapor through it almost like a patuga distillation where they're hanging the the chicken crust, right?
Well exactly I mean what I guess what Charles is saying is that you have this truffle, you spent the money on it, it's going to continue to make aroma for you know for several days. So you want to continue to capture that aroma for several days rather than actually cutting it into it and end basically ending that truffle's aroma production right away by either cutting it and consuming it like we do classically when you could be capturing it over a long period of time. And so I guess what I'm saying is yeah if you did it if you bathed it in alcohol it might kill it. Who knows? I don't know.
Uh where you know would you whereas if it's just if it's in uh you know in in an alcohol vapor environment for you know, 30 minutes, and maybe then you let it come back up and let it bring its aroma back and do it again, you could possibly capture a lot more of the aroma. In fact, you could almost probably do it the the vapor equivalent of a soxelet extraction where you're you know, you you could probably use yesterday's truffle booze and then redistill that again through the through the you know the the reoxygenated truffle like three, four times to get to really concentrate the heck out of it. I don't know. I'm just like saying like the kinds of things that I might try if I had my my roto vap up and running. Uh it may not even require your rotovap in the sense that the truffle aroma will naturally just dissolve in the alcohol.
So we we actually have a a partner, the Oregon Truffle Festival has a partner in Bowro and Distillery that's making a truffle vodka. And they can do it in two ways. One is to just set the truffle next to the alcohol and the aroma accumulates in the alcohol. The other way is to extract the aroma from the truffle by immersing it in alcohol, but you'll get more aroma the first. Because it can produce it for a longer period of time.
Right. Right. Presumably you'll get a higher instantaneous concentration through maceration, but you're saying that the net effect over several days of letting it sit above the alcohol is a higher end concentration. Right, right, exactly. And also there's that problem of the mushroom equality, the one oxen three all when you macerate the truffle.
What about has that person done any tests with uh like convection? Like actually like you know, convecting the surface of the of the head space to try to get uh you know a faster, more complete um aroma removal from the from the truffle or no? I don't know their process exactly, but um I'm not aware that they've done it. That's what I would stir the hell up. Yeah, well, that's the thing.
Remember there's a crazy, that crazy lemon cello person who never lets the peels touch the thing, and it was like all the all the buzz of the lemon cello internets uh a couple of years ago. Yeah, I'm sure you could do the same thing, although I think a lot of the components in limoncello aren't nearly as volatile and aromatic as a truffle. So you probably have better shot with a truffle. You're saying fresh air, or do you think that alco uh alcohol vapor is gonna hurt it too? The alcohol vapor does accumulate in the truffle.
Hmm. So hmm, well if anyone wants to send me some organ truffle, my rotor is up and running. And uh I'd be happy to uh to just spin those around for you. Yeah, yeah. I got a quick eggnog update for you if you want if you want that today, or I can call back another week.
No, give me some eggnog. Nastassi loves eggnog. And I tasted the George Washington and Michael Rollman's recipe from early 2015, January 2015. Uh ruleman uh update is that it tastes like eggnog. It tastes better, but not so dramatic.
Uh washing, which is I think around 12 and a half or 11 and a half percent, get funk like paper brown. Wait, Alvin, you're you're you're break you're breaking up. What happened to Washington's, which is a lower proof? Uh gets get real funky, like uh like here, uh fermented milk and goat cheese boo cheese, but if you shake it over ice, it's not on putting, but probably wouldn't drink too. So you're saying it's an acquired taste, much like uh much like uh uh meat, like g oh, game meat that's been aged for a long time.
Uh I'm not familiar with that, but but uh the tasting method I definitely get is like cofier yogurt. Hmm. Yeah, I don't know that I want to pound that. See I'm not an eggnog guy. I like eggnog.
Nastasi loves eggnog. I like eggnog. I don't know that I want like a goatee barnyardy egg eggnog. I'm looking at Nastasia's face. Yeah, so it's a one and done, it's not a pounder.
It's one of those things that people wrinkle at her face and go, interesting. Yeah. Correct. Yeah, nice. But Ruben ru Romans is aging nicely, so uh you know, I'll come back next year with the uh the uh fourth year of the vertical.
Alright, cool. Yeah, let us know. I I always want I always want eggnog updates, as does uh, you know, many of the may like Nick Bennett does it, uh Piper Christensen, like a bunch of people we know are big on the on the aging eggnog. So yeah, keep bringing it back. Yeah, maybe I'll send you guys some actually if you want to test it.
It's it's it's obviously rim temperature stable at this point, so yeah, I'd love to try it. I'll try it. Uh no, s uh send it to uh like i you have it Nastasi's email, just like send her one. I'll give you my personal address. It's fine.
And then ship it there, yeah, but not not over the air. She even she's not that crazy to give her address over the air. Um but um yeah, yeah, I'd love to try it. We'll try it on the air. All right.
All right, cool. Um, so Nastasia, do I have time for a couple of to take a couple of m I mean? I think you should finish up with Charles and Charles, Charles, stay I I I gotta c I gotta people have these questions, no? We're gonna get all the questions. I have a question on uh pressure cooking vegetables, on salting, I have a question on rabbits.
Luckily, John's question on rabbits, the rabbits aren't coming back for another couple of months, so I can I can wait on his rabbit question. And then I have uh the the question is he has all these rabbits and he lives in a suburban. He wants to catch them and eat them, and should he do that or should he not? I have one on the on the color of cooking meat, which I think is interesting. And actually, uh I'm doing a lot of work on that now from my next book for the uh low temperature book, the color of meat in cooking and low temperature is like super important.
Should I do so uh Charles, any of those topics interest you? We can uh answer one of those questions and the rest I can put off till next week? Uh I'm not sure that means I'm really pertaining to truffle. No, yeah, they're not they're not truffle. What do you say?
There's another way to incorporate truffle aroma and alcohol, which is to add some something fatty. I actually have a partner hopefully brewery that's truffle beer that's very authentic working behavior. Yeah, well, fat washing obviously is a technique that uh yeah, we all know know and love. So you're saying basically do almost like an enflourage, like uh have it transfer to the oil because it can stay over the oil head space indefinitely without damaging the truffle, and then mix that with the alcohol and then take the fat off. You can get a fairly you think you can get a fairly um uh efficient extraction that way?
Yes, I think so. I actually I think the oil is the aroma is more soluble in oil than it is in alcohol. Um well, obviously, I guess truffle oil, right? So then you fat wash the truffle oil. You what do you want to?
Everybody who listens to this show knows that truffle oil is garbage and an enemy of quality and just like the worst thing. You actually say that you have good ones, but like the commercial stuff. Do you do you feel the need to say something negative about it, or do you just accept that everyone here already knows that it's a garbage product? I mean it is authentic truffle oil. It does exist.
I I don't know who to refer you to to get it though. Yeah. Yeah. Um usually a chef makes it themselves. What do you say?
Usually a chef makes their own truffle oil. Right. Um the authentic truffle oils are not putting bubbles and sold in the store. All right. Well, Charles, I look forward to meeting you next week, and McGee and uh mean and I are gonna eat the heck out of some Oregon truffles and hopefully find some, maybe even get some of that minty smell right out of the ground.
I'll report back to cooking issues, but I gotta get I'll do one. I'll do the rabbits. I'll do rabbits. I thought you said that was the longest. It is, but it's like it's also the easiest one to answer.
The rest of them take a lot longer. So John writes in uh from New Jersey uh hello, Dave and Cooking Issues crew. Every year when spring arrives, those of us in the suburbs face a scourge of an R-selected mammalian population boom. The beasts we deal with may look all cute and cuddly, but in reality they are ravenous rodents with no regard for modern suburban homeowner priorities. I speak, of course, of the eastern cotton tail rabbit.
They annihilate our carefully tended gardens, destroy our nascent fruit and vegetable patches, and leave poop all over our lawns and patios, and they breed like rabbits. Yeah, yeah. Uh well, last year a local fox was able to keep the population down. This year I'm gonna take things into my own hands. I've considered going straight up Carl Spackler, which is by the way, the guy from uh Caddy Shack, Bill Murray's character from Caddyshack.
Uh, Carl Spackler and dynamite in the neighborhood, but I think it might be more delicious to trap the rabbits and save the meat for culinary use. In doing my research, I've seen various comments online about how suburban rabbits are not safe to eat and that the meat will be overrun with parasites and other non-good things. This doesn't seem right to me. Are rabbits really that different from other wild game? That's my question.
What's your advice on safe and delicious methods of slaughtering, handling, and cooking these rabbits? I was thinking of freezing the meat before low temp cooking them to paste it, but wasn't sure if that was overkill or not. I'm also slightly uh worried about freaking out my wife and kids and all our friends with this project, uh, but with a delicious result, I expect they'll get over it. Well, okay. Uh thanks, uh John from uh New Jersey.
Okay, uh, first of all, uh though they're not gonna get over it. Let me just tell you this, they're not gonna get over it. People, like some people will get over it. Like if you grew up in a hunting household uh where people like go out and hunt things, then they're gonna be fine with it. If you didn't grow up in that environment, uh a lot of times they're like, meat comes from a store, meat is raised for being killed, and you can't get people around it.
It's just weird. You have to suss out your own family on this, but if they if they say ahead of time that they're not gonna be okay with it, then believe me, they're not gonna be okay with it. Uh I mean I'm okay with it. Now, your second thing is what's the problem with uh rabbits? Now, I also looked online for this, and some people are like wildly crazy worried that like somehow suburban uh, you know, rabbits are like licking motor oil and like you know, I don't know, I don't know, doing some sort of like terrible uh stuff.
But if you're willing to eat the products that you grow where you are, I don't think rabbits make a habit of licking up motor oil or or like cats, like eating ethylene glycol, or if you know, uh, you know, with antifreeze that cats eat and it kills them. But I you know, I don't I don't know of anything like that. I think that stuff is basically hogwash. What is true is that rabbits in general can have um uh tularemia, and you want to be careful about it. So uh tularemia, in fact, uh they get it from tick bites uh and and and I guess there's other vectors, but tick bites is one of them.
And it is a um it is easily transmissible from a rabbit to a human being, and there have been cases of this happening. Uh and now if you thoroughly cook the animal, you get rid of it, but it it it is possible to catch it while skinning the rabbit. So you have to be careful. What you typically do when you're testing it, and and I looked it up online. Um, you know, I looked up you know, hunting rabbits tularemia because people who hunt rabbits a lot, like this is something they're worried about.
They're like, look out for rabbits that look lethargic or sick, and then when you when you eviscerate the rabbit, you look at the liver, and if the liver is kind of spotted or speckled, that's a good sign that that rabbit has tularemia. Now you can and there's pictures online, you can you can see in general. As for how to slaughter them, because you're not hunting them, you're trapping them. Uh, I would go to uh Adam Dan. I I have never slaughtered a rabbit, but it it it was until very recently the last animal that would be slaughtered right where you were gonna eat it.
So butcher shops that still wouldn't slaughter uh pigs or uh or sheep or cows uh you know nearer where their shop is would still slaughter um rabbits uh in their butcher shop. And this would happen up until fairly recently, even after, way after it was illegal, just because it was very kind of simple to do, and it was considered uh it was a thing that many butchers did. Uh that said, uh I don't know how to do it, but there is a book on it. Uh Adam Danforth's uh butchering poultry, rabbit, lamb, uh, goat, and pork has a whole section on how to uh properly uh and humanely slaughter a rabbit and how to eviscerate it. And I highly recommend his book.
He has another one, a whole one on beef, and it's eye-opening on the procedures of how it works. And if you get that book, which is not that expensive on Amazon, the soft cover version of it, you can get an idea of whether you really want to go through with it or not, because he goes through all the steps of what needs to happen. So the two things I would look up are uh are the tularemia, how to check for it, how to prevent uh, you know, you getting it while you're skinning it, because I think it I think certain things can get aerosolized, like blood and stuff when you're skinning it, and then that's where it happens. Uh it again, you can cook it uh and be safe. And then on how to butcher and slaughter it, um, you know, go to Adam Danforth.
And then if you still want to cook with it later, I'm gonna be working on rabbit eventually, but probably not for a month or two for uh my book. So come back, hit me then with some recipes for rabbit doing low temp. Uh thanks to uh Charles LaFever from uh the the Oregon Truffle Festival and his company is uh it's truffletree.com is or Truffletree is his website. Uh but uh I forget the uh the what are you still there, Professor uh Doctor? What's the name of the company?
It's New World Truffier. New World Truffiere, and and Truffle Tree, Truffletree.com or dot org is your is your website. Exactly. Truffle, yeah, truffletree.com. And uh thanks, and we'll see you next week on cooking issues.
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