One stop is to dig black truffles with local farmers.
On the first day in Kunming, I had dinner with local friends. There are chefs at the dining table, local baristas who run Yunnan cuisine business, and Yunnan consultants who are "China on the tip of the tongue". Everyone was drinking wine and chatting happily. They all have different views on Yunnan and even the whole world, and all of them are directly expressed.
We talked about digging black truffles, and they all advised us not to go, saying that we would be disappointed. The reason is nothing more than dissatisfaction with the size and aroma of Yunnan black truffles.
I also brought a scrap: white truffles used in many high-end restaurants in first-tier cities are also produced in Yunnan, telling guests that they are Italian. How many guests have eaten real Italian white truffles? How many Italian white truffles can enter China Customs? Isn't it that domestic sales pretend to be imports and information asymmetry makes money?
But people like us are leaders. The more others can't say it well, the more they want to feel it-how can they have a say without personal experience?
Just like some restaurants, when they see someone scolding them, they don't know if it's right, so they pay for a meal themselves. Only with first-hand materials can they be qualified to scold with others.
The place to dig black truffles is a small village in Huize County, Qujing City. Starting from Huize county, we have been driving on the mountain road for more than half an hour. The uncles and villagers who took us to dig truffles have been waiting on the roadside for a long time.
Leave the village road and walk a little into the mountains, and you will reach the place where you can dig truffles. Uncle told us the way to dig truffles: first, find a pine tree, dig out the soil next to it, and after seeing the thin stem, continue digging along the stem, and you will have a chance to dig truffles.
Uncle began to dig a few times, gave me the rake and let me continue to dig. The harvest won't come so soon, but the vegetation on the surface has been destroyed and some roots of soil have been dug up in our planned place. We looked around and found several plots like this. Only then did we realize that digging truffles here actually caused quite serious damage to the land. As for whether it will damage the roots of pine trees, it is still unknown.
There was no harvest at first, so my uncle took us up a small slope. He said truffles were more likely to be dug here.
A piece of land just uphill, the soil is completely bare, and there is no trace of vegetation at all. A few steps further inside, you can clearly see that the land has been turned over, the grass has been uprooted, and some sporadic moss can be seen.
Uncle began to enter the state and dug truffles seriously. After a while, three little black truffles, three to five centimeters in diameter, were dug up, wrapped in mud, which was not very impressive. At this time, almost five or six square meters of land were turned over.
I looked down along the turned-out land on the slope, and there was a pine forest on it, which still maintained a relatively primitive landform. In other words, truffle diggers will dig all the way to this hillside in the future, pick up truffles and leave the land chewed by rakes. We don't know when these lands will be restored to their original appearance. The people present first had a discussion, and then there was a short silence.
Everyone knows that there are truffles in Yunnan. But I don't know how many truffles are dug up like this in Yunnan.
Go to town for lunch at noon, and bring black truffles to make a local specialty-truffle chicken. A Yunnan chef said that unlike eating in western food, local people cut black truffles into thick slices of stewed chicken soup.
The noon sun in Yunnan is very comfortable. I was in the courtyard of a restaurant, basking in the sun, watching the chef deal with black truffles. I saw that they poured black truffles into a basin of clear water, brushed the soil quickly with a brush, cut them into thick pieces, and prepared to go down to chicken soup.
I looked at the cut black truffles, some with texture, and some without texture at all. Pick it up and smell it. There is almost no fragrance. If you put a few pieces in your mouth and chew them, the aroma is still not obvious. You can only expect truffle chicken for the time being.
Several farm dishes in Yunnan are very grounded, and the local ingredients are interpreted in simple terms. When the truffle chicken was served, everyone's attention was attracted. After all, it is a legendary dish, which was mentioned every day after this trip to Yunnan.
There is nothing to say about the taste of chicken soup. The umami flavor is higher than that of feed chicken in our city, and the chicken is slightly chewy. However, a large number of black truffles in it did not add any flavor to the whole dish, but just silently acted as a vase. I think that even if a little potato is added to the chicken soup, the unique taste of the tuber can improve the whole dish, unlike the local black truffle, which has no contribution at all.
At this point, I thought of taking the black truffles to the proprietress when I first entered the restaurant. She took it and said simply, "Oh, it's Poria."
There is no word "truffle" in local vocabulary. This kind of thing is called "Poria cocos".
"Poria cocos" is the abbreviation of "Smilax glabra". At first glance, it is a very cheap thing. Because of the word "earth", "Poria cocos" is a cheap Chinese herbal medicine.
In addition to "Smilax glabra", black truffles have several other names in Yunnan population:
-because the smell attracts pigs, pigs will dig them out, so it is called "pig fungus", which is very rustic.
-because it is a mushroom that grows out of thin air, it is called "the fruit without a mother", and it is inexplicable.
-because it smells bad when it is fully mature, it is also called "smelly chicken fir", which is still rustic.
However, this unpleasant smell of truffles is the unique aroma of truffles, which fascinates countless westerners. More than ten years ago, this kind of food began to appear in high-end western restaurants in China, and now it is used to it. In recent years, truffles in Yunnan have sprung up everywhere, from black truffles to white truffles, which has attracted everyone's discussion. Yunnan Truffles Truffles Are Truffles Really Truffles? Is it cultivated artificially?
In fact, Yunnan truffles and European truffles are the same thing, and they are also wild, just because of the local conditions, the aroma is slightly inferior. However, when Yunnan truffles really mature, no matter the size, texture or aroma, they are still extraordinary things to be reckoned with.
(The word "truffle" was originally translated as "truffle" by Institute of Microbiology, China Academy of Sciences 1976. Translated into a more romantic "truffle", there is no definite statement after the reform and opening up and after the 1980 s. The first time I saw the translation of "truffle" was in the Chinese version of "About Taste" of 1998. So what Yunnan people think of as "Indian truffles" and what French people call "black spore truffles" are actually "truffles". )
Unfortunately, in Yunnan, truffles are dug from summer to winter. Although the season of Yunnan truffles is longer than that of Europe, the truffles are pulled out one by one before they grow up, which leads to the fact that most of Yunnan truffles are small, have no texture, and the most important thing is that they are not fragrant enough.
Europeans dig truffles by using the sense of smell of pigs and hounds (hounds are basically used now), or by groping with sticks and other objects by experience, which belongs to fixed-point search. Although there is some experience in digging truffles in Yunnan, the final way is carpet search. In this way, it is not only difficult to produce mature truffles to gain a foothold in the market (good Yunnan truffles are mostly used as European truffles), but also destroy the surface vegetation.
From digging truffles down the mountain to now, whenever we talk about Yunnan truffles, we will feel lost.
As a person in the food and beverage industry, everyone has more or less respect for truffles, the world's top ingredient. It stands to reason that we should be proud to know that China also produces truffles, but this time, we only have silence.
Do you really want to dig truffles in Yunnan like this?