Edible luxuries to find under the tree
Meera Cortesi’s truffles are truly buried treasures. Xanthe Clay learns how to pick the best, and tips more treats to send by post
Feeding people, it’s what Christmas is about. The turkey, the cake, the pudding, the goodies, the “oh go on just one more, it is Christmas”; call it love, nurture or just a last blowout before winter takes hold, it’s part of the ritual, and one that’s deeply ingrained in the cook’s psyche. But if this year there will be fewer people around the table than usual, take comfort in making sure you still treat your friends and family, however far away they are.
In fact, there’s never been a better time. Food delivery is booming, with artisan producers finding new markets from supermarket-weary, locked-down customers and restaurant suppliers branching out to retail. The restaurants themselves are blasting away some of the mystique of the professional kitchen with meal kits so that those of us starved of dinners out can recreate the dishes in our own homes.
So, what is the ultimate foodie present? If cash is short, then homemade chutney or jam is a money-can’t-buy ‘It’s like strawberries – if you buy it, eat it. When spending that kind of money they’re best fresh’
love in a pot. Or take a tip from the Americans and pack a tin with homemade biscuits, cut in festive shapes and speckled with red and green hundreds and thousands.
But at the other end of the scale, the money-no-object end, there’s only one answer. Truffles, of course. I don’t mean chocolates (although a box of champagne truffles never goes amiss). Real truffles, a kind of underground fungus, are the most revered ingredient in cuisine, and Alba white truffles are the holy grail. They might resemble grubby, knobbly pebbles and a small one can cost more than dinner for two in a Michelin-starred restaurant, but chefs go wild for the gorgeously musky, funky fragrance. Of course, all the excitement may be more than gastronomic: the unimpressive-looking fungi are said to contain sex pheromones.
For most of us, our experience of truffle is in products such as cheese, oil, paste, pasta. Sadly though, these mostly contain minimal, if any, truffle. What you are tasting is a blend of flavourings, chiefly the appetisingly named bis (methylthio) methane, aka 2,4-Dithiapentane – the labels will probably refer simply to “truffle flavouring”. If you are after the real thing, then head to wiltshiretruffles.com which, alongside fresh truffles, sells butter, cheese and truffle mayonnaise, eschewing truffle flavouring in favour of copious amounts of black truffle.
It’s probably fair that finding a fresh
Cortesi imports white and black Italian truffles to the UK and counts Angela Hartnett and Fortnum & Mason among her clients
white truffle for sale is hard work. Truffle hunters and their dogs spend long cold hours rummaging in the woods in search of just one tiny fungus, in a sort of vegetal version of the
They are indeed buried treasure: one enormous truffle weighing nearly 1.3kg fetched $330,000 at auction three years ago. But as the harvest is tiny, it is blisteringly expensive, and mostly goes to restaurants.
Still want to buy one? The River Café, Ducasse at the Dorchester, Angela Hartnett, and London’s Trullo restaurant source theirs from truffle dealer Meera Cortesi, who left banking 15 years ago to import these diamonds of the vegetable world from Italy. A precious few of Cortesi’s stock go to Fortnum & Mason, which will ship them nationwide.
When I spoke to Cortesi this week
Detectorists.
she was just packing up her bag in the Fortnum’s offices. It’s peak white truffle season now until Christmas, and the new season black truffles are just arriving too, from Norcia in Italy and Perigord in France. But never mind the geography, I had one important question: if I’m shelling out £200 on a something that looks like an undersized Jerusalem artichoke, how do I know it’s a good one?
“Feel it: it should be dense, and definitely not spongy. Then smell it – it should smell strong, but if it makes you recoil, it has gone bad. You also sometimes get some that don’t smell of anything, which we call – potatoes – in Italy.” But, Cortesi pointed out, it’s a wild food, so there will be some variation, and once you’ve got your truffle, don’t hang around. “It’s like strawberries
patate
– if you buy it, eat it. When you are spending that kind of money, they are best fresh.”
If you must keep your truffle, five days is the maximum and store it wrapped in kitchen paper in an airtight container in the fridge. Pop a few eggs in the container too, as they are porous and will absorb the fragrance, “for fantastic scrambled eggs.” Christmas breakfast, sorted.
Truffles from Fortnum & Mason cost around £6,500 per kg for white truffles (£195 for a 30g truffle) and £2,200 per kg for black winter truffles. These prices can vary through the season. To order call the fresh food order desk (020 7734 8040, extension 14170) where staff can advise on sizes available and current prices.