Famous delicacies: mushrooms truffles

Truffles – the most valuable in the world of mushrooms with a heady, earthy, garlic aroma and unusually delicate flavor is prized by gourmets for centuries and even the ancient Greeks was reckoned to be an aphrodisiac. Of the nearly 70 known varieties of this fungus the most valuable is the white truffle.

Like looking for truffles

How looking for truffles, there is an amazing irony – one of the most expensive foods on the planet can produce, if you enlist the help of an animal that many consider "unclean". Pigs love these mushrooms that can smell their flavor under a layer of earth. Another "joke" of nature, hidden in the truffles, were able to evaluate scientists not long ago, these mushrooms, known for lovers is a fine flavor, the most important component of the smell is dimethyl sulfide. It would seem that such? But this ingredient is "responsible" for the smell of boiled cabbage, which many find too easy and what's more, unpleasant.

Truffles like soft, cracked tubers. They grow at the roots of such trees as oak, chestnut, Linden, poplar, beech and hazel. Sometimes the fungus can be detected at a depth of more than a meter under the ground, but never truffles will not grow outside the shadow cast by the tree branches. Mushrooms grow in the wild throughout Europe, when they "ripen", truffles emit a strong, distinct smell that can be detected by sensitive noses of animals. Gourmet pigs was the first thing people began to use search of delicacies, but "hunt" with them was very difficult. First, pigs are very weighty hunters and they are not so easy to deliver to the place of the search. Secondly, finding the mushroom, they tend to immediately eat. Soon to replace the pigs came specially trained dogs, whose sensitive but not at all inferior to pork Piglet. Once the dog finds a mushroom, he begins to bark loudly and then comes the collector truffles. With the help of special narrow blade with a long handle ditch the mushroom, and then remove it, being careful not to touch with hands, otherwise the truffle will start to rot. If the mushroom is ripe, it buried back to give it a grow. The best specimens of mushrooms weigh more than 100 grams.

Types of truffles

Truffles do not grow in artificial conditions. All attempts to grow them from spores or seeds patted collapse, so the mushrooms harvested in the wild. Depending on where you grew up truffle and what type it belongs to, is assigned the price of mushroom.

The most valuable are white truffles grown in Alba in Piedmont. In fact, it was the mushrooms pale cream-colored marble with white veins. Next in value are considered black truffles from Périgord, France. Followed by Italian black truffles of Spoleto, which actually have a dark brown soft skin, also flecked with white streaks.

How to use truffles

Truffles are used as a flavoring, gradually adding to various dishes, such as omelets, pasta, risotto, and various sauces. To make the truffles more affordable, their flavored olive oil or salt. Although such products still get expensive, they are not as expensive as the mushrooms themselves, moreover, are stored much longer.