Falling in Love Again…with a Tuber
It’s been a long time since I’ve been in love. That is, with anyone besides my (now grown) children and my cats. But just today, a package arrives on my doorstep.
I bring it in with reverence, still wrapped in the cold of a winter’s day, and peel off the plastic surrounding it.
A scent of olives, of cloves perhaps, of moss, of a walk in the woods in September. Also, the pungency of fresh, raw meat — beef or groundhog, without the gaminess of groundhog. Carpaccio. Cheese too. Muenster — the kind my parents used to buy at the local supermarket, soft and yellow in the middle, with little baby holes, orange rind, without the pungency of French cheeses, but still nutty and flavorful, creamy and delicious. Fresh-baked bread is there too, still damp and warm from the oven. Coffee mixed with molasses — sorghum, that is. Or Grandma’s.
I haven’t even opened the box yet, but I am bathed in the aroma of its contents. How long will I be able to resist taking off the next layer?
There is a sweetness, the delicious pain of anticipation, of delayed gratification, as I stall still longer, hands trembling, heart racing, slowly breaking the seal.
Thirteen of them! Oh wait…one’s a pebble. It’s small and sandy-brown, like a misshapen marble. The rest are…truffles! Tuber lyonii, pecan truffles, so called because they appear under pecan trees, and in orchards where other truffle species have been planted, along for the ride.
These need cleaning. I dig up a toothbrush and a toothpick, and spend a good fifteen minutes brushing out the sand and red clay from their crevasses. They are largely smooth, but the dirt looks just like the peridium, and I don’t want any tooth-cracking going on.
I nibble on a few morsels that have broken off in the process. They are mildly nutty, like an English walnut crossed with a roasted chestnut. One of them is round and hard, just like a baby potato, the ones I like to pick up at harvest because they are so small no one else wants to bother with them.
Now that they’ve been scuffed, they smell even more like sorghum. And a little bit like cooked turnips.
I’ve just finished boiling up a huge pot of tagliatelle, so I scoop some into a dish, pour on a trickle of heavy cream, and pop it in the oven to warm while I track down my microplane. A fresh grinding of salt, then a grating of truffle (I end up using two nubbins), and I find myself with my face in the bowl, bathing in the perfume.
It’s like parmesan but milder, nuttier, like a whiff of Périgord, but more subtle, more controlled. The tagliatelle and cream are the perfect vehicle. Something stronger — even potato — might be too much.
I lick my bowl, then lick my lips. Orion, the black cat, gets up on the table and sticks his nose in the bowl along with me. I put it on the floor so he can extract the last bit of flavor from the ceramic glaze.
Then I go to the canhouse and bring in two ball jars, to store the remaining specimens with eggs and butter. The ball jars are cold, and while they become uncondensed, I put a whiskey glass up-side-down on top of the truffles to keep the aroma close.
When I lift the glass my nostrils are assailed again, with a scent I could wear around my neck for the rest of my life. I’m alone with my tubers. And in love.
