Black Diamond Truffles – A Fungus to Die For

There’s always a dark side. On the 30th of January though, in the little Quercy town of Lalbenque, the day had been kidnapped by spring, the sun was warm, the sky was blue and the temperature reached seventeen degrees. It was a Tuesday, and at three p.m. every Tuesday from early December to late March, one of the largest truffle markets in France takes place in Lalbenque. It is a delight and a throwback to an earlier age when the centre of the old towns was the base for the local farmers and artisans to trade their produce in the fresh air or in an ancient market hall.

But truffles dwell in darkness and grow in secrecy, and even their sale is ritualistic. The Lalbenque Market takes place on one side of the main street, opposite the Mairie. A long row of low, wooden trestle tables are provided for the vendors, who stand behind them, shoulder to shoulder, with their small baskets of truffles. Red and white checked cloths line the baskets and are drawn over the truffles before the market begins. A metre in front of the tables is a rope held on metal stands, and none but the officials and marshals of the market may step on that side of the rope until the market begins. And there are officials, they walk, clip-board in hand, up and down the row, checking the produce, confirming the authenticity of the source and, I imagine, asking questions of catechism that only true initiates can answer. There is smelling before the bell rings. I saw baskets being handed across the rope to prospective buyers to smell, for the aroma is the thing – freshness, gathered at just the optimum moment, which renders a truffle devastatingly desirable or unwanted and ostracised.

This day there were around forty vendors braced for the bell. At three o’clock the rope dropped and the narrow crowd surged forward, orderly but fast. Thousands of euros changed hands and in fifteen minutes much of the produce was gone, poured from the baskets into brown paper bags and whisked away, bound for the restaurants and preserve makers of France. But the little old couple, faces as creased as the truffles themselves, they stood sad but reconciled, their truffles remained unsold; the noses have it, and theirs must have failed the test, too young, too old, the boundaries are hard and there is no right of appeal.

The town of Lalbenque on the edge of the Causses of Quercy, has a museum of truffle ephemera, and in the Mairie, on market day, there are exhibits and vendors of truffle preserves and oil and of course good wine. It is a town made magic by the truffle.

So what is all the fuss about? Black diamonds they are called and can cost hundreds of euros a kilo. The Black Quercy Truffle is the star of the truffle world; rich in complex aromas of the undergrowth, peppery and pungent. It grows beneath oak trees, and sometimes hazel, lime and pine, and it likes chalky, limestone soil. This is the edge of the Quercy Blanc region; Quercy from quercus the Latin name for the oak tree - the region named by the Romans, and Blanc for the limestone that emerges through stark white stones in the fields and raw bleached cliffs where the earth has moved. So it’s a food source and therefore of infinite interest and value to the residents of France. It is added to all nature of dishes as well as to preserves and oils, game pâté, foie gras and even scrambled eggs.

It is dogs that find them, sometimes pigs, but they can be too efficient at both finding and eating the black gold. So dogs are best, and a good truffle dog is an animal that should be lauded and kept safe. For there is a dark side. Dogs are stolen and killed. In Italy, poisoned treats, laced with strychnine have been left in woods to kill the truffle dogs of competitors, leading to the deaths of dozens of dogs and other animals like deer and foxes. A few years ago in France a truffle thief was shot dead in the woods by a local farmer, and in Syria at least twenty six truffle foragers were killed by suspected Islamic state fighters last year.

You can’t blame the fungus; truffles do their best to keep their heads down, living harmlessly under the earth, interacting with the host trees to their mutual benefit. No, it’s man who turns truffles through the strange alchemy of markets and haute cuisine, into an object of lust and desire. Who would get caught up in that madness?

So we bought two truffle impregnated oak saplings at the market at Lalbenque last Tuesday, and tomorrow we will plant them in our chalky soil and protect them from the deer and rabbits. And we have informed our cocker spaniel of her proposed mid-life career change. No more sticks or rubber hedgehogs, from now on we are pursuing the black diamonds and nothing must interfere with that.

Training begins