Well, maybe some people do. At $900 per pound, white truffles are extravagant by any standard, though all you really need is a single ounce. Available from late October through early February, they traditionally grow in the woods of northern Italy’s Piedmont region, where trained dogs ferret out the knobby bulbs. A wet summer has yielded a bumper crop, driving prices down about 20 percent from last year. While hardly a bargain, they’re more accessible to home cooks than ever.
Prices and quality can vary wildly. www.trufflemarket.com, a golf-ball-size one-ounce truffle sells for $60, while at New York’s Dean & DeLuca (www.deananddeluca.com), the same-size tuber runs $106. And a truffle that isn’t perfectly fresh is about as sumptuous as a rutabaga. Truffles should be firm, like a potato, and never spongy, says Marcella Hazan, cookbook author and godmother of Italian cuisine. They should have a nice, strong aroma, she adds. And they should be eaten as soon as possible after purchase.
As a birthday present for her husband, Victor, Hazan sometimes makes a dish layering boiled potatoes, generous amounts of truffle shavings and Parmesan, baked until the cheese and a bit of butter on top melt. (She figures it costs about $100 per serving.) But truffles are typically eaten raw, shaved over a simple dish like a light risotto or fettuccine with butter and Parmesan. Specialty cooking stores like Williams-Sonoma (williamssonoma.com) and Sur La Table (surlatable.com) sell truffle slicers for less than $25, but a sharp potato peeler will work just fine. Novices, beware: fans say the worst thing about truffles isn’t the price, it’s the fact that they’re habit-forming.
