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Truff
Love The producers of the first and likely annual Oregon Truffle Festival are plenty food-savvy folks. They must have known, when they began their planning a year ago, that their star attraction — Oregon truffles (the fungi, not the chocolates) in all their finery from white to black — had the gastronomic cachet to wow an audience and the charisma to pin the spotlight on a dinner plate. But they really couldn't guess the extent of the jazz they'd generate.
The Truffle Festival was held the last weekend in January, and it was an Event, a small tsunami in the food world. The ripples, I'm sure, are still racing across two oceans. We'll be feeling the long-term aftershocks for many years. Before we can measure the impact, we have to appreciate the role played by the humble truffle on the world food stage. Gourmets globally hold the truffle at the same status as, say, actors hold Oscars. In the current market, for example, French black truffles retail for up to $1,000 for a pound of scruffy-looking black balls. By comparison, the Oregon black truffle markets at about a 10th that price, but $100 a pound is still a hefty ticket for a wild-growing fungus. Strange obsession: In the domain of foodstuffs, not many are more homely than truffles. Certainly, they're not pretty. The white truffle looks quite a lot like an irregular lump of Spackle, about the size of an art eraser. The brown is just a darker version. The black truffle (in Europe the more intensely flavored, though not always so in the Oregon kin) is slightly more dramatic, about the size and coloration of a burnt golf ball. But properly ripened and sliced or diced into stingy portions, they deliver flavor punch that's hard to over-hype. The trick, for the greedy seeker, is to find the yummy little buggers at their peak of ripeness, then get them to home or market before they age and die. Anyone who promises to help in those processes will draw a crowd. And that's just what the festival folk did to bring visitors winging to tiny Eugene from Japan, France, Spain, Germany, Italy and sundry parts of the U.S., including, of course, many from Oregon. It's been known for years that truffles grow wild in Oregon, but the early tryouts garnered blah reviews: They were bland, dull, not remotely comparable to their European cousins. French truffles, by contrast, are richly pungent, emitting aromas that, as Danuta Pfeiffer (of Junction City's Pfeiffer Vineyards, and KOPT radio) noted, "can drive a female pig to sexual frenzy." And the flavors of the French black are so vibrant — the very essence of earth, spiky with pepper and hints of dark woods — that paper-thin slivers nearly erupt on the palate. Chefs add truffles to recipes usually in minute amounts, as they would, say, saffron. This year, though, the Oregon truffle proved itself a trouper, played to a full house and rated boffo raves. All writers keep a handy bag of superlatives — "best" this, "most" that — and careful writers dole those out with stingy reluctance. Except for a couple of minor glitches, I could very nearly empty my sack. Keeping it simple, the event was excellent and the organizers and all their volunteers earning a standing O. Recapping: Official opening ceremonies took place Friday evening at Triomphe, with Leslie Scott warming the assembly, then introducing co-organizer Steve Remington (fondly remembered in this burg for making the Eugene Celebration the success it became) and Charles Lefevre, president of the North American Truffling Society and an expert whose Ph.D. in mycology has led to his developing a business in truffle cultivation. Very prominent, standing at a rail-thin six and a half feet, was Oregon's designated Mister Truffle, Jim Wells, also main maven of Oregon Wild Edibles! Tom Linninger — UO Law professor, president of Eugene City Club, popular ex-county commissioner — greeted visitors and shamelessly promoted our city and state, happily welcoming truffles to our economic mix. Stephanie Pearl Kimmel, owner of Marché and James Beard Award-winner, capped the speeches with the headline: "With proper harvesting and ripening [Oregon truffles] are the equal of the European truffle. I have had some spectacular examples." What performer wants to watch the curtain rise after an intro that sets expectations at such a level? The Oregon truffle, for two days and nights, punched 'em outta their seats, put 'em in the aisles. The kid flat knocked their rubber boots clean off. Organizers offered festival participants a range of packages from $395 to nearly a thousand bux for the full hoopla, including opportunities to study truffle cultivation at a two-day seminar held at LCC and led by experts from Spain. All the packages sold out. Friday night, guests chose truffle-centered dinners from among some of our best fine-dining restaurants — Marché, Adam's, Zenon, Chef's Kitchen. Our choice: Tom "Bruno" Bollag, the chef in Chef's Kitchen, has long had a rep as a cook who could bring out the best in a fungus, and Friday his tiny joint was rocked to the walls with truffle fiends. Bessie Bollag and her crew of sprites were run ragged, but Bruno just ripped the place up with trufflized savories. The Bomb? Roasted lamb loin chops in black truffle butter sauce. What a love affair. Saturday started with visits to Oregon wineries in the Lorane Valley — King Estate and Iris Hill — with cooking demonstrations using truffles, leading to an afternoon of foraging at a known truffle site in Cottage Grove, all capped off by a Grand Dinner served at LCC, five courses prepared by five talented chefs and matched with five Oregon wines, served superbly by students in LCC's Culinary Arts Program. That ended Day Two. Day Three, Sunday, began with brunch at Marché, then segued to an all-day Truffle Marketplace held at the Downtown Athletic Club: tastes of truffles, truffle foodstuffs, artisanal breads, coffees, wine tasting of such superior labels as Domaine Drouhin, Archery Summit, Brandborg, Iris Hill, King Estate and Valley View. In all, the Oregon Truffle Festival delivered an assault on the culinary senses rivaled, in this region, only by the annual Pinot Noir Conference. No one could blame the Truffle Conference crew for feeling giddy at their success, but the story cannot be complete without a peek at the turmoil backstage, the dark side of the tale. We have to face facts. The troubles with truffles are legion. The first problem is demand: Gourmets feel about truffles rather like they feel about Russian caviar (now approaching extinction), which drives up the price, stimulating some folks' greed glands. The main danger that follows has been dubbed rake rape. Truffles grow in the root systems of certain trees. They have a complex, symbiotic relationship with their hosts and other critters in their ecosystem, and they're hard to find. For centuries, European truffle hunters relied on pigs to snuff the ripest of the little yummers; lately, trained dogs have proven even more effective — and they don't try to scarf their score, as pigs are wont. But in Oregon we've a distinct shortage of trained sniffers, porcine or canine, which means that too often foragers have ravaged likely sites by plunging long-tined rakes into the forest floor, scratching out whole colonies, ripe and unripe no matter, to devastating effect. Jim Wells put the problem in pithy terms: "Eating truffles is sexy. Digging truffles is not sexy." So the First Annual Truffle Festival closed on good news/bad news/best news notes. The good news is that Oregon truffles have culinary star-power. The bad news is that they're rare and their harvesting a risky business best left to trained hunters and professional cultivators. The best news is that the pros have found the handle on the truffle challenge and will be delivering those dusky delicacies all through this spring, to restaurants and markets near us. And that's a happy tune. Oh, and curtain rises on next year's festival on Jan. 26-28. Early purchase of tickets is advised for very likely an SRO event.
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