It was only one, but it made Professor Wang Yun a happy man. After Peg had done her stuff in Hagley Park, the NZTA conference attendees jumped on a bus for a visit to a productive truffiere in North Canterbury, and then on to Limestone Hills. Wang was on the tour, but instead of joining everyone in the truffiere, he headed off to the little patch of Pinus radiata infected with Lactarius deliciosus that I planted as part of a trial three or four years ago. Mine was the only plantation that had not produced, so Wang was interested to have a look and see how things were going. And this is what he found…

A perfect little saffron milk cap, all on its own in North Canterbury.

Why mine was so slow to produce is something of a mystery. It is probably down to the fact that I used glyphosate to keep the young radiata plants free of weeds. This fruiting body was down in a little rabbit scrape, barely sticking its cap above ground level. Next year, the mycelium should have fully recovered, and as the trees have been growing vigourously (they have irrigation) I hope to get a much more substantial harvest

Wang’s the man behind the introduction of saffron milk cap to New Zealand. The mushroom is commonly sold in European markets, and as the Latin name suggests, is highly regarded as a culinary mushroom. In Australia, where the fungus was accidentally introduced in pine plantations (especially in Victoria and New South Wales), there is a thriving local market supplying restaurants. Market price is usually around $50/kg. Wang’s idea is that if foresters planted trees infected with mushrooms, they would benefit from an income stream while waiting for the timber to mature. In fact, it’s possible that the mushrooms could be worth more than the wood.

At Limestone Hills, our aim is much more modest. I just want to grow enough to be able to have some good feeds every year. I cooked the one in the picture, sliced, in a little butter. It lived up to its name.

The second annual NZ Truffle Association truffle dog championships were held in Hagley Park, Christchurch, on the Sunday morning of Queen’s Birthday weekend. And Peg won again. It was not a fix. She did it in front of TV cameras from TV One, and if I could work out how to grab the section from the DVD recording and drop it down in size, I’d host the segment from the evening news here. But I haven’t got time to fiddle with that, so I won’t. She is, however, still a star – even if she hasn’t yet found a truffle at the Hills.

[Update 1/2008: Video here.]

The Queen (Elizabeth 2nd of Great Britain) is a lucky woman: she has several birthdays. In NZ, her official birthday is celebrated with a holiday on a Monday in early June. Australia also celebrates Queen’s Birthday, but a week after NZ, which is when Britain does it (I think). And then she has a real birthday too, when Charles and Camilla probably turn up with a box of chocolates and some cool new music for Liz’s iPod. Queen’s Birthday weekend is when the NZ Truffle Association holds its Annual General Meeting and conference. This year was Christchurch’s turn, and getting it organised was one of the things that kept me off the net for most of May. Last year we invited two international speakers: neither made it. This year we tried again, and both made it. Christina Wedén flew in from Sweden to tell us how she had (almost) single-handedly created a truffle business on the Baltic island of Gotland, and Tim Terry, grower of Australia’s first Périgord black truffle, came over to tell us how good his season was going to be.

Christina and Tim (sorry Christina – but this photo is much better than the other one…)

We hosted them up at Limestone Hills for a couple of nights before the conference. Christina was keen to see our little aestivum/uncinatum truffiere (which includes trees infected with inoculum she provided), and Tim was only too happy to satisfy my curiosity about events on the other side of the Tasman (of which more later). Good company, and more invites I’d be a mug to ignore…

It’s been a long time between entries: I blame the season, the need to work on the book, the truffle association conference, etc and so on. It’s over a month now since Patricia Wells, the Provence-based American food writer, cookery guru and International Herald Tribune restaurant reviewer visited Limestone Hills. She’d just won a James Beard Award for her Provence Cookbook, and was understandably chuffed.

The sun shone…

She was over here to take some masterclasses at the Savour New Zealand weekend in early May. She expressed an interest (in a radio interview) in finding out about NZ’s truffle business so I was happy to oblige. Patricia was charming and very interested in what we’re up to. I now have an invite to visit her in Provence during the truffle season – one of those offers you can’t refuse. And if you’re interested, her truffle cooking class in January 2006 is US$4,000 for the week (and sold out long ago).

The first truffles of the winter season are turning up in New Zealand and Australia, including first production on very young (third year) trees in New South Wales. Tim Terry, one of Tasmania’s pioneer growers and the man who found Australia’s first black truffle in 1999, tells me that the truffle was found under a young Quercus ilex (holly oak). More information here, here and on Tim’s website. Tim’s coming over to give a talk to the NZ Truffle Association conference next weekend (Queen’s Birthday weekend) and will be spending a few nights in Limestone Hills, so I’ll be digging for more info.

Meanwhile, the New Zealand truffle harvest is already underway, with ripe truffles reported from several North Island truffieres. Down here in Canterbury, two truffieres have already made their first finds, but of unripe truffles. May in NZ is equivalent to November “up North”, and in Canterbury we reckon optimum ripeness isn’t achieved before the end of June – which fits in nicely with French tradition. French gourmands will tell you that the best truffles are found after Christmas – which in our case translates to after the shortest day.

So will I find my first truffles at Limestone Hills this year? Still too early to say. I haven’t noticed any sticking out of the ground (which is how the two local finds of unripe truffle were made), and my brulées are not as obvious as last year. A couple of wet months has prompted a fair bit of weed growth, but that doesn’t mean the fungus isn’t alive and well and fruiting happily. My fingers, and several other appendages, are crossed.

Today was beautiful: the perfect autumn day. Incredible deep blue sky, the poplars turning yellow, and dew on the lawns. The truffiere’s looking good, there are olives in the grove, and tonight’s dinner featured an all-garden ratatouille (yellow courgette, baby aubergine, chilli (two kinds), red tomatoes and green tomatoes, oregano and basil. Served with stuffed marrow – a courgette that got away. We did pizzas in the wood-fired oven on Sunday, and they were rather tasty too. Holidays now. While MIke the editor labours over my turgid prose and a designer friend (Tony Cohen in London) considers typography, I shall whisk my family off to Rarotonga and Aitutaki for 10 days. It’ll rain.

[It did.]

Summer is tailing off into autumn, the nights are drawing in, and thoughts are turning to the winter truffle season. Last weekend, the amazingly charming Peg had her first refresher course of the year – just a quick sniff to see if she remembered what she was supposed to be doing.

I have four 35mm film canisters with pierced lids in the freezer. Each contains a chunk of last year’s truffle. All I did was bury them a couple of inches down in the soil around four trees, and leave them there for an hour or two to develop some scent. Then I ran through Peg’s pre-hunt routine: on with the collar and lead, a couple of strips of Schmakos as treats stuffed into a pocket (she spots that unerringly), grab a trowel fromthe garage, and then we walk down to the truffière. We get to the trees, I tell her to start sniffing, and off she goes. She finds all four in about three minutes – too easy. Next time I’ll have to make her work harder, perhaps by scattering the baits over a larger area. But it was good to see that she remembered what her job is. All I need now is some reassurance that the real things are forming in the brulées round the trees. My appendages are crossed.

Oregon has more than white truffles. The Portland Times has a very interesting piece on Oregon Black truffles, praising them highly:

“It’s like a treasure hunt,” says Jim Wells, a director at MycoLogical Natural Products in Eugene. Mycology is the study of fungi, and this company specializes in wild mushrooms, including truffles, picked from the surrounding forests.

Wells is a proponent of Oregon black truffles, which he calls “the premier truffle on the planet.” They’re fruity and versatile, he says, with a subtle flavor that changes from day to day.

Like many fans, Wells thinks that Oregon truffles are under-appreciated. He says people often don’t realize how good the local product is because they taste truffles that have been mishandled. Both black and white varieties are extremely fragile, and a few days can make the difference between superb and dud. European truffles have the advantage of a longer shelf life.”

I suspect that describing the Oregon black as the “premier truffle on the planet” is either good salesmanship or betrays a sad lack of knowledge of other black truffles, but the Oregon white is certainly worth attention. Charles Lefevre, in a recent email (where he thanks me for the “tongue in cheek” comment below), tells me of a trial he recently conducted between Tuber magnatum and good specimens of Tuber gibbosum:

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Chinese truffles look a lot like Perigord Black truffles, cost a lot less, but have less flavour and aroma. They’ve been a major source of fraud over the last ten years. Time Asia digs into the issue this week, and provides plenty of colourful info:

From the French perspective, the bad news in this piece is the discovery that Tuber indicum out-competes melanosporum. There are fears that indicum may find its way into French truffieres, even unconfirmed reports that it’s already happened.

“We saw in experiments that Tuber indicum is very dominant, competitive and aggressive,” frets Gerard Chevalier, a researcher at INRA. He paints a scenario in which errant spores from imported Chinese truffles disperse into the air, contaminate the French countryside and do ecological battle with their more fragile cousin.”

It might be better for the rest of the world if the Chinese discovered a taste for their own truffles, but that doesn’t seem likely:

“None of that, though, changes one irksome fact that has limited Wu’s business. For all their gastronomic enthusiasm for endangered sea animals or all matter of rare mammalian life, the Chinese so far appear immune to the pleasures of a black truffle. Mushroom gatherer Li Kun shakes his head when asked whether he enjoys the flavor of the black nuggets he’s scooping up from the loamy soil near Hama. “When we’re really hungry, we eat them covered with soy sauce, coriander, chili paste and MSG,” he says. “That way you don’t have to taste the truffle too much, only the sauce.”

[Update: 10/1/08: The above is not true. Local populations in Yunnan and Sichuan were well aware of their truffles, and very happy to eat them.]

Truffle poaching is becoming a real problem in France, according to Newsweek. As much as 10 percent of this season’s crop may have been stolen, truffle growers are up in arms, and the gendarmes are out in force with night vision goggles. But is there a high-tec answer?

In December, Cholin proposed embedding a microchip in truffles to track stolen ones using Global Positioning System satellites. The idea was discussed at a meeting of the French Federation of Truffle Growers, but didn’t go far. One drawback: police would have no way of distinguishing fleeing thieves from roaming boars, who also fancy truffles. Another: the tracking technology is similar to the radio transmitters naturalists use to follow birds, but it won’t be small enough to go unnoticed in truffles for another decade, according to Franck Pantaleo, head radio-communications researcher at Saphelec, a firm in Marseilles.

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