Truffles (fungal type)

[Hot Flatus]

They're bollocks aren't they.

We passed through Reims (the capital of Champagne region) last summer on our way to Italy. The whole town was full of wine bars serving glasses of overpriced champagne to empty nesters with white teeth for about €20 a head. But, there was also a sideline in truffles, with several very glitzy shops specialising in truffled products. I ate more than my fair share of samples and despite the salesman extolling the virtues of the finest whatever it was I had just eaten, all of it tasted like butter/oil/chocolate mixed with a smear of that mushroom paté that comes in toothpaste tubes you find in healthfood shops.

We literally dig these things up in our garden from under the silver birch tree. Am I posh?

[mrcharly-YHT]

This past weekend I twice ate something with truffle in it.

Sashimi that had slivers of truffle. The truffle tasted like very very dark cooked down mushroom. Intense, but not nastily so.

Soup with truffle oil. Again, it added a certain mushroominess to the dish.

So I think they are overrated, you could get a similar effect with ordinary mushrooms.

[T42]

When my son was in primary school one of the girls brought in a basket of truffles and handed them round. Her father was a dealer. In truffles, not drugs.

[Efrogwr]

The other day Mrs E's B-i-L mentioned truffles.(Neither of us have ever even seen any. After a couple of minutes our consensus was that their cachet is that they are rare and, therefore, expensive. Conspicuous consumption...

[ian]

I find them meh, but I'm generally not a big fan of mushrooms, and if you want stuff to taste of mushrooms, dried porcini are a lot cheaper.

Or you could make a recipe more fun by using chocolate truffles instead.

Most of the 'truffle oils' are synthetic (primarily 2,4-dithiapentane apparently) and haven't seen a fungus.

[Ham]

If you are thinking of truffles as just another mushroom, you're doing it wrong. There are limited combos that actually show off truffles to their best: Omelette and consomme come to mind. For the rest, you're better off using morel.

[Mrs Pingu]

I quite likes a bit of truffley stuff. Unfortunately the time of year we usually go to France the truffle season is over.