? When to pick truffles
October to December every year.
Taste: distinctive. Slightly garlicky, somewhat cheese-like, with some pungent flavors.
Serving: usually raw, thinly sliced and served with eggs, rigatoni, lasagna or salad.
Truffle (scientific name: Truffle) is a generic term for a type of mushroom, classified in the genus Truffula (scientific name: Tuber) of the family Ascomycota, the Western Truffle family. There are about 10 different species, usually annual fungi. Usually annual fungi, most of the roots in the broad-leaved trees with silk growth, usually grows in the pine, oak, oak trees. Scattered in the bottom of the tree 120 - 150 cm square, block body hidden in the ground 3 - 40 cm. Distributed in Italy, France, Spain, China, New Zealand and other countries.
Truffle edible odor special, rich in protein, amino acids and other nutrients. Truffle on the growth of the environment is extremely demanding, and can not be artificially cultivated, production is rare, resulting in its rare and expensive. Therefore, Europeans will be truffles and caviar, foie gras and listed as "the world's three delicacies".
Among the many types, the black truffle (Tuber melanosporum Vitt.) from France and the white truffle (Tuber magnatum Pico) from Italy are the most highly rated. White truffles are usually eaten raw, grated and sprinkled over pasta or omelettes. They can be thinly sliced and added to meat for baking, or used to roast foie gras. Truffles are also added to some cheeses. Black truffles do not have as strong a flavor as white truffles and can be made into truffle salt or truffle honey. Truffles used to be peeled, but now they are mostly ground to avoid waste.
How to harvest truffles
Black truffles usually ripen from November to March, and the best season is usually between December and March. Truffle collectors are called "truffle hunters", and each truffle hunter carries a family treasure map, recording where, when and how big the truffles were found by their fathers and grandfathers. The process of finding truffles is very interesting and the methods used by the hunters vary from country to country.
In France, it is customary to use the sow as a useful assistant in harvesting black truffles. Sows have an extremely sensitive sense of smell and can smell truffles buried 25 to 30 centimeters deep in the ground at a distance of 6 meters. This is because the odor of truffles is similar to androstenol, which induces the sow's sex drive,[4] so sows are attracted to them. But sows have a voracious appetite for truffles, and if hunters don't stop them in time, they will frantically arch them out and eat them when they find them.
In Italy, people prefer to use trained female hounds to find white truffles. Usually, the hound marks the truffle's location with her paw, and when her owner arrives, she carefully digs the precious truffle out of the soil with a small rake. The training of a truffle-seeking hound involves a complex process that begins with training the dog to retrieve a thrown ball, then replacing the ball with cheese, then hiding the cheese for the dog to find, and finally replacing the cheese with a small piece of truffle for the dog to find and dig out. Such a trained hound can fetch up to 3,000 euros on the market. The night before the truffle hunt, the hunter usually doesn't feed the hound, so that the hound will work harder to find the truffle in exchange for food as a reward.
Who can't eat truffles
Truffles can be eaten by most people, but truffles belong to the fungus class is also a kind of hair, so for people with a history of allergies or try to eat less or not eat.