A nose for truffles

I was in the culver city warehouse of urbani, the world’s largest importer of truffles, standing next to 10 pounds of fresh white winter truffles. My entire body was tingling from the power of their musky, earthy perfume. The estimated market value of the contents of the three small boxes at my side was $15,000--wholesale. They looked like worthless, sandy rocks, mineral colored in beige and ochre with hints of celadon green, lumpy and pitted like potatoes grown in the worst soil. They had been unearthed just days before by hunters working with specially trained truffle dogs digging among the roots of oak and hazelnut trees in Alba in Italy’s Piedmont region.

I’ve been a truffle hound ever since I had an aromatic bowl of pasta steeped in the rare fungi’s flavor. Most of my experiences since have been both disappointing and expensive: a pricey little bottle of preserved black truffles that were rubbery and insipid; a costly entree littered with odorless and bland black truffle chips; fresh black winter truffles from Northern California’s forests that were fragrant but flavorless. After my first hit and so many misses, I was beginning to think of truffles as a culinary emperor’s new clothes. Until, that is, I discovered truffle butter, a pungent and affordable truffle fix. I’d come to its manufacturer, Urbani, in search of its secrets.

According to Diane Ackerman’s “A Natural History of the Senses,” there’s a deliciously vulgar chemistry behind our human attraction to truffles, some of which, she says, contain twice as much androstenol--a pheromone closely akin to the human male hormone--as would normally appear in a male pig. Is it any wonder then that these subterranean growths have been considered aphrodisiacs since ancient times? Or that medieval men disavowed them as manifestations of the devil?

Good truffles are the gastromonmic equivalent of Barry White. I held one of the love muffins to my nose and detected notes of turpentine and garlic underlying their familiar and endearing scent. I had to take a bite. “Raw truffles don’t have any flavor,” Urbani general manager Andrew Safina warned as he gave me a broken bit to nibble. He was right. Truffles need heat to bring the flavor out. It can take $40 to $50 worth to season a couple of servings of scrambled eggs. Most of Urbani’s fresh truffle shipment, about 40 pounds a week, ends up shaved over foods or mixed into risottos for an extravagant earthy touch at top restaurants such as Spago Beverly Hills, Patina, Vincenti and Valentino. The smaller grade of fresh truffles can be found in a few gourmet stores for about $85 per ounce for the whites and $50 per ounce for the blacks.

“For the average person,” Safina says, “the truffle butter or oil is their best bet.” Urbani’s truffle butter is enhanced with truffle essence, a crystallized powder made from the dried, unsaleable bits of white truffle. In my experience, essence--whether used in oils, butter or other foods--is the only way to get a truffle flavor that is as powerful as a fresh truffle smells. For all I know my first perfect bowl of truffle pasta was drenched in it. Enjoy the following steak and mushroom dish with a macho red Italian wine and your favorite truffle hounds.

Sauted filet mignon with portobello mushroom and truffle butter

Serves 4

4 filet mignon steaks, approximately 11/2 inches thick

2 tablespoons butter, preferably clarified

4 melon ball-sized knobs of truffle butter

Salt and fresh ground pepper

2 portobello mushrooms

Olive oil

Rub portobello mushrooms clean and brush lightly with olive oil on both sides, salt lightly, place in low (450 degree) broiler for 7 minutes on each side or until tender and done. Keep warm while preparing steaks. Place a frying pan (preferably nonstick) large enough to hold the steaks comfortably over high heat; film with butter. When butter is very hot but not browning, put steaks in pan. Saute for two minutes, turn, salt lightly and cook another few minutes. Adjust heat so steaks don’t get too brown and cook to desired doneness, turning again as needed. Medium-rare steaks should have some spring to the touch. If necessary, check by cutting into the meat. While steaks are cooking, prepare portobello mushrooms by cutting in half, then cutting each half lengthwise into strips but without cutting all the way through so that the mushroom will fan out onto the plate. Assemble dish by placing a portobello mushroom “fan” on each plate, set a steak at the base of the fan and top each steak with a truffle butter “melon ball.”

RESOURCE GUIDE

ENTERTAINING, Page 33: Coffee jelly is sold at Yaohan Mitsuwa, 333 S. Alameda St., Los Angeles, (213) 687-6699, and Nijiya Market, 2130 Sawtelle Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 575-3300. It is also available at the bakery Mousse Fantasy, 2130 Sawtelle Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 479-6665; and the restaurants Sawtelle Kitchen, 2024 Sawtelle Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 445-9288, and Asakuma, 11701 Wilshire Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 826-0013.

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Nancy Spiller last wrote about chestnuts for the magazine.