Country Life does truffles

Country Life, National Radio's farming and country programme, covered the truffle business on last week's show. I took producer Tania Oolders down to Ashburton to interview John and Iris Burn, and you can hear Peg having her refresher course in the Burns' truffiere. Tania also interviewed Carolyn Dixon of Crop & Food Research, and Bill Lee, who is setting up a new truffle tree nursery (working with Tim Terry). It's a good 30-odd minute summary of the state of the business down here, and well worth a listen. Audio stream and podcast available.

Monday, August 7, 2006 12:19 pm (permalink)

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The Truffle Book

Winner of the Special Jury Award at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. "Absolutely rivetting" - a well-known prince. Available as softback, limited edition hardback, and PDF. Free sample PDF.

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It's taking me far too long to read this. I have been a fan of Pynchon since reading Gravity's Rainbow as a student. Against The Day strikes me as one of his most approachable novels, full of fantastic characters and wild invention, but I've been busy doing word things, and sometimes the last thing I want to do is read. But this is like fine wine, keeps tempting me to another glass. At 1085 pages, I'll be squiffy before I'm finished.

just read

I've read two books called Heat in the last month. One was damn scary, and one was by George Monbiot, about global warming (which has a fantastic cover). Some would say I've been and gone and had my mid-life crisis, but it didn't involve doing an apprenticeship at the altar of real Italian cuisine and a tyrannical chef. Bill Buford is not me, and for that I'm grateful. I suspect he may be too. I enjoyed it - the kitchen stuff was pretty compelling (as was the Italian butcher I may just have to visit next time I'm on Italian truffle time), but somehow the whole thing didn't hang together. I know where Bill's coming from - and I can sort of sense where he went - but his own motivation (and his family's reaction) remain mysterious.