In this episode I’m sharing what kind of experiences made me fall in love with truffles, the other side of truffles that has nothing to do with high-end restaurants and astronomical prices and why truffle hunting is the quintessence of Tuscan conviviality.
Links:
* Sagra del Tartufo, a truffle festival, in Cellai, Florence. It takes place every June from Friday to Sunday. 2023 dates are not out yet.
* Town of Greve in Chianti.
* Daniele’s wine, Campolaia.
* A beautiful documentary on truffle hunters in Piedmont, Italy. Pure poetry! It warms my heart every time. Grab a glass of wine and enjoy it. Trailer here, full movie here.
Full episode transcript:
Welcome to my Tuscan Roots podcast with me, Giuditta.
Episode number 3 is about how I learned to love truffles and appreciate Tuscan conviviality. So as a kid, I hated truffles. I remember my first encounter. I was in high school having dinner at my friend Laura’s, and we were chatting in her room when her dad called us for dinner. So when I opened the bedroom door, I got hit by an intensely revolting smell. I thought that there was something like a gas leak and the house was about to explode. But no, there were truffles for dinner. So that night I politely declined the truffles and ate plain pasta. For years after that, I honestly wondered how on earth people could find that disgusting smell so appetizing. I, of course, changed my opinion about eating truffles a few years later, but it wasn’t until a couple of months ago that I finally learned the most important lesson about truffles. In this podcast, I’m going to share my truffle journey.
When I was 20, my friends invited me to go with them to the Sagra del Tartufo, which is a rural truffle festival that takes place every June in the village of Cellai, south of Florence. At the Sagra, a temporary kitchen was set up under a white large tent in a parking lot just right behind the main road. Neon lights were hanging from the tent and old ladies and men wearing caps and aprons were cooking behind the counter. People were sharing communal plastic tables. Children were running and screaming and their fathers were shouting at them to behave. Then there were old couples and groups of teenagers. It was loud and chaotic, but very joyful. Sagra always have the power to bring all the generations together at the same tables. So my friends and I filled out a photocopied sheet of paper putting an X beside the dishes we wanted to order. I took a chance and put X’s beside Bruschetta with shaped truffles and truffle lasagna. We paid and sat down with my friends at a table where others were already eating. A little later, a young girl brought me a grey plastic tray with two paper plates one with a large slice of Tuscan bread generously drizzled with olive oil, with brown petals of truffles on top, and the other with a large square of white lasagna overflowing with bechamel sauce, packed with dark bits of truffle. I remember that the bruschetta had a crunchy crust and a chewy middle and the olive oil was peppery and the truffles reminded me of mushrooms and forest. It wasn’t overpowering, just delicious. Then I cut into the soft lasagna with my plastic fork. The truffle flavor was carried so harmoniously by the creamy sauce. It was really savory and buttery. That, honestly, was a beautiful way to spend a summer evening People sharing good food in a parking lot, chatting. It was really joyful.
I’d learned to love truffles but, as I said, I wouldn’t take the most important step in my journey until years later. I have been very interested in how food is produced. I have my own veggie garden, but it’s very difficult to grow your own truffles. You have to plant specially inoculated oak trees and it takes many years with no guarantee it will work. And then you need to have very well trained dogs, of course. So when I was in Italy earlier this year, I resolved to experience a truffle hunt to understand how truffles are collected.
On a crispy February morning I drove my mother’s fiat panta along a bumpy gravel road in near I was near, actually Grave in Chianti through olive groves and vineyards and parked in front of an old farmhouse. Daniele, the truffle hunter, greeted me on the terrace, along with Billa and Billo, two adorable lagotti romagnoli which are truffle dogs. After a quick espresso in the dining room, the small group of strangers that gathered for the truffle hunt, walked in the oak woods just outside Daniele’s garden, the only sounds were twigs snapping under our feet and the heavy breathing of the dogs running around. Periodically, Daniele shouted Dai dai, cerca, cerca to the dogs to motivate them, which I can translate with come on, come on, find it, find it. And then someone shouted the dog is digging. And I felt a rush of adrenaline and I ran to see what was happening. I kneeled on the ground to scratch at the dirt to help the dog find a truffle. And there it was. I held a little truffle between my fingers, squeezing it to feel the texture and smelling the familiar scent of earth and mushrooms. After we’d found a few more truffles, we headed back to the farmhouse. Daniele’s wife made us a lovely lunch with the truffles we’d collected, together with some produce from her garden. Daniele served us the wine he has been making with his father since he was a teenager, so we all sat together at the table under the porch. Daniele passed around a truffle and a crater and we shaved truffle onto our tagliatelle. That day we ate delicious food and drank good wine and talked about our hopes for the future and our shared parenting struggles. We were people from different backgrounds and countries, brought together by the shared experience of hunting for truffles in the Tuscany countryside. And that’s when it clicked.
For me, truffles aren’t just food. We are also one of the pillars of Tuscan conviviality. It had been right in front of me this whole time. You know Laura’s father passing the truffles and the grater, with the whole family sat around the table, and joy at the Sagra del Tartufo in the parking lot with plastic tables. And then you know strangers sitting in a Tuscan garden chatting and eating the truffles they just collected among the oak trees.
And of course, you can enjoy truffles at any expensive restaurants anywhere in the world, and they are delicious. But you will be missing the most important part the experience of Tuscan conviviality. Personally, I rather eat a truffle dish from a paper plate in a parking lot surrounded by screaming kids and old couples. And the truffle experience is even richer if you can go with someone like Daniele and his dogs into the Tuscan countryside to find the truffles yourself. So for me, conviviality means people from different backgrounds coming together to make and enjoy a meal, and if you think about it, it’s a very simple recipe for joy and happiness that is harder and harder to find in our fast-paced world. I’ve experienced conviviality in many cultures when traveling, but I have to say that Italians are especially good at creating convivial experiences. See you next week.