EL SEGUNDO HERALD February 24, 2022 Page 15
Travel from front page
If that isn’t appetizing enough, consider that
2,4-dithiapentane is also known as the dimethyl
dithioacetal of formaldehyde. And if you still
haven’t lost your appetite, 2,4-dithiapentane
is the odor that overwhelms your nostrils
in halitosis, smelly feet, and some forms of
flatulence.
Yum!
So that evening, our entirely authentic (and
wildly expensive) dinner at Enoteca, even
with hours of Chez Janou’s absinthe in our
bloodstreams, came as a revelation—one of
those meals in your gastronomic life that
divides the BE from the AE (Before and After
Enoteca). As of that night, we still had a few
weeks of vacation left and nothing planned,
so our mission became clear—to thoroughly
research the subject of truffles and to chase
the weird and elusive tubers all the way to
their origins.
There’s a scene in the movie Goodfellas,
where the Paul Sorvino godfather takes forever
to slice a garlic clove with a razor blade into
tiny, translucent sheets (since he’s in prison, he
naturally has the time). No one would blame
you for slicing your truffles that way (in or
out of prison), because the genuine article
comes in at more than $300 per pound. So
one way to guess that you’re buying the real
thing comes when your French grocer uses
three keys and a secret password to unlock
the caviar-pâté-truffle cabinet.
Why so expensive? Because human beings
have never quite found a way to standardize
the harvesting of the tuber, a distant relative
of the common mushroom. Truffles grow in
random clumps a few centimeters underground,
in the roots of oak and hazelnut trees, both
wild and cultivated. Theoretically, they can
be found anywhere on earth, but the three
dominant regions are Italian Piedmont for
white truffles, and Périgord (just outside
Bordeaux) and upper Provence for the black,
French version. In the 19th century, these
regions exported truffles of both colors, but
then World War I killed too many farmers,
World War II destroyed too many forests,
and suddenly, truffle-harvesting became a
rare and disappearing art.
It might come as a surprise, considering
how they usually live, but female pigs have
one of the most acute senses of smell in the
animal kingdom. Add in the fact that the scent
of raw truffles is indistinguishable from the
sex phenome of boar saliva, and for centuries,
these females have proved remarkably
enthusiastic at sniffing out the underground
fungi. The only issue is that these same very
smart pigs excel at wolfing down the buried
treasure before the farmer can pry it away
from them. So much so that, in 1985, Italy
banned pigs altogether in favor of dogs—who
don’t particularly care for the taste, but can be
trained from puppyhood to follow its scent.
On that allegedly cold November evening
at Enoteca, we’d already thought about following
in Thomas Jefferson’s steps when
he took a rickety three-day carriage ride to
Tain-l’Hermitage, south of Lyon, to augment
his wine collection. Tain and Châteauneuf-du-
Pape bookend a hilly wine region in southeast
France that boasts some of the country’s best
“undiscovered” wines—up-and-coming AOCs
like Gigondas and Vacqueyras. So we decided
to stock up on obscure wines, chase down
the black truffles of the Vaucluse, and then
head to Marseille for Bouillabaisse.
As we mentioned, sometimes in traveling,
you just have to roll with the punches. And it
turned out that Enoteca had been celebrating
the start of the Italian truffle season—the
French season, where we were headed,
wouldn’t open for another couple of weeks.
The bad news: We’d miss the boisterous
open-air markets where the farmers convene
to sell their harvests. We’d also miss the latest
and greatest truffle specials in the local
restaurants. The good news: No one would
mind us wandering around the plantations
themselves, sniffing and photographing the
pregnant, photogenic oaks.
And so we spent a week wine-shopping and
puttering around Richerenches, Carpentras,
and Grignon, the three scenic villages at the
heart of the French truffle industry. With the
lavender and fruit tree harvests just in, the
air was pungent with a constantly evolving
aroma. The truffle forests were unfenced,
so the only limit on our meanderings was
the size of our tires and the ruts on the dirt
roads. Farmers—who would probably shoo
us out of the way in another month—glanced
up from the repairs they were working on,
but otherwise ignored the invasion.
In that sleepy calm before the harvesting
storm, the biggest challenge was to find an
open restaurant for an edible lunch. So we
were walking around Grignan, getting used
to the idea of kebabs at the local Turkish
grill, when we passed a rusty cast iron gate
into a disaster of wildly overgrown weeds.
Through the mess, we thought we spotted
a glass greenhouse with uniformed young
women walking back and forth. A push of
the gate, and we crawled through to find the
back door to a thoroughly elegant atrium
restaurant with exactly one two-top available.
At the next table, a bride-to-be and her
mother and aunts (we guessed) were being
served an endless variety of Nouvelle Cuisine
tidbits. When we discreetly enquired
of the maître d’, he explained that we were
looking at an eight-course tasting menu that
the chef had developed for brides who were
planning their receptions. Naturally, that was
exactly what we were looking for—more
or less anyway—so we spent the next three
hours in the longest, most elaborate, most
delicious, and yes, most expensive, lunch
we’d ever eaten.
But here, in the heart of truffle country, out
of season and in the typically purist French
manner, not one iota of truffle appeared on
our plates. So we just had to roll with that
punch straight out of the restaurant and into
a very long and happy afternoon nap.
Next up: The Thing About Istanbul.
Ben & Glinda Shipley, published writers
and photographers, share their expertise and
experience of their many world travels. If
you have any questions or interest in a particular
subject, please email them at web@
heraldpublications.com. •
Richerenches—Beware of the pig!
Paris—Armed against an icy chill by the absinthes at Chez Janou.
Richerenches—Truffles, lavender, and fruit trees in late autumn.
Carpentras—Tunnel of oaks, hazelnuts, and porcine love. Grignan—Lunch of the century at le Clair de la Plume.