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[0:37] Hello and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245. Where am I today, sis? Bushwick. Where? Brooklyn. Well, you forgot to say Roberta's Pizza. Oh, yeah. Well, that's a given. This didn't go well. You're supposed to, like, you got a b, b, b. There's no other place. You got a book, you got to do the, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, so we have, as usual, in the studio, Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, which you referred to in a question as the

[1:13] Hammerus. Did you like that? Did you enjoy the hammeras? Yeah? And we got Dave in the booth. How you doing, Dave? I'm good, how are you? Good. Call in. Oh, by the way, we have a special guest on the phone. Not going to bring him on quite yet, because I got to tell you where who he is. Although actually, you know what? Are you there? Professor, you there? been waiting. Hello? Hello? Hey, so we have a special guest today. Charles, now, Dr. Charles. Now, you're, he pronounces his last name, like 70s disco style, Le Fever, even though it's written Frenchy style, Lefevre, but you go by Le Fever, which I think is like a 1000 times better. What do you think, Stas? Is that true? Yeah, well, see versus the American. Yeah, yeah, seriously American, which I, you know, everyone here knows. I appreciate. And, uh, Professor uh, LaFever or Dr. LaFever is the world's authority on uh, specifically on Oregon truffles, but all things truffle. He is a, you're a mycologist, correct? That is correct? Is there a so specialty within mycology that deals with truffles? Oh, there's not a name for it. You could make one up, though, truffologist. Truffologist. Ectomycorizzolologist. So, uh, so anyway, so, uh, how do you like to be referred to, by the way? what do you want me to call you? Charles, we're fine. Okay, Charles. So, uh, call in all of your truffle related questions. Now, as I said, he actually has a company where he grows, well, he cultivates European tuber

[2:47] Milanus forums in Oregon, as well as collects the local domestic Oregon truffle

[2:53] varieties and searches all over the country and the world for new, interesting, unused, whether they taste good or whether they don't, varieties of truffles.

[3:01] So you can call in any, any and all truffle related or probably

[3:06] any uh, mushroom or mycological uh, questions too. 718-497-2128, that 718-497, uh, 2128.

[3:14] So, let's get, let's just get started right away and let's talk about, kind of, why don't you just give the, by the way, our, our listeners here, the cooking issues crowd is not afraid

[3:24] of uh, of uh, technical jargon or uh, complexities or anything. So you don't need to, like, hold back or anything. Why don't you just basically explain what a truffle is? What is the trouble? Well, truffle the mushroom? And, but, unlike other mushrooms, they depend on animals to disperse their spores.

[3:44] So where mushrooms will disperse their spores in the wind. Truffles depend on animals finding them, digging them up, eating them for their dispersal. So, and that's kind of key to the whole understanding of why truffles are expensive, because they, you know,

[4:00] imagine, they're hidden in the forests, down in the wilderness. It's cold, it's wet, it's dark. And they have to somehow convince some animal to come find them. So, they just, uh, they use every trick they can, to attract animals from a

[4:16] smart way as they can, to eat them, and, uh, it explains why they're expensive. Now, so, so, so, they're underground, and they're like the, the fruiting body of these, uh, these funguses, that fungi, that, uh, live in close proximity to certain tree roots,

[4:35] right? That's right. Yeah, they're in a, in a microizal symbiosis with the tree, that's both, the fungus and the tree need each other. Now, and the hard part about it, right, is is that these truffles, they, they only, they don't grow with the tree for its entire life, right? Don't you have to find like a specific, like this particular one likes to live in trees that are between like 15 and 50 years

[4:58] old? Isn't it like all weird and crazy like this? Yeah, there is ecological succession on the roots of an individual tree. So yes, different truffles live within a different window of time on the roots of the trees. Fortunately, almost all truffles live on very, very young trees, which is why we

[5:14] can open it. So, like, how long? Like, let's say you're going to go, like, okay, hazelnut, like European style, like what are we looking at for the age of the optimum age for truffling up a tree? Well, among my customers, the very youngest trees that have produced ruffles have been 3 years old.

[5:30] Huh, cool. And so you actually, do you, are you sell, uh, like trees with, uh, that have been inoculated with the spores or no? That's correct. Yes. Just so you know, whenever I say spore, Nastasia, my cohorts coast here, like she detests the word spore, maybe you can make her not hate the word spore so much.

[5:48] Or you can think of a sport as a seed. Serves the same function in the lifecycle as the organism that a seat does. Yeah, all right. Any technically, obviously, not correct, but makes her feel better. So, all right. But the, um, so now here's here's my other, uh, thing. So one of your, I don't even know where to start because I got so much to, so much to deal with here on the truffles. So let's go back to this smell. So all truffles, because they all live on your ground. By the way, how far underground are we talking? Oh, anywhere from actually on the surface where you can see them to 3 or 4 feet deep. Three or 4 feet? Can a dog smell 3 or 4 feet deep? Yes, they can. The world's largest Italian light truffles lives down 3 feet deep. I wonder how it tasted. Is there any difference in taste between depth? Is there any sort of, like, in a particular region? So assuming there's a terroir for a region, which I'm going to have you talk about in a minute. Is there any relationship between size and depth and flavor?

[6:47] I don't know that there's any connection between size and flavor or depth

[6:52] and flavor, but there could be. There's certainly a huge variation in flavor from one truffle for the next. Yeah, because it's likely that the host tree has an impact on their flavor, and the region very easily could. But there may be more variability from one truffle to the next, even within a place than there are between places. Really? So, like, a tuber Milanus forum, the perigord truffle, the black truffle. Uh, so if you were to take it, I'm sure you have. I don't know, but if you take one that you've harvested in, um, in

[7:23] Oregon, and you were to somehow take one that was harvested in France and then fly to some point in the middle so that they each were out of the dirt for the exact same length of

[7:33] time, and they were the same, you know, relative size and whatever. Would there be a big difference in flavor between the 2 that were grown in different areas, assuming they were on the same kind of tree substrate? So far, nobody has shown that there is a difference between truffles grown in the natural habitat versus truffles grown outside the natural habitat. But, of course, in different regions of Europe where truffles are grown. Um, there's, there's a perceived difference, like the truffles from Paragord are the most expensive where those from Spain are a little less expensive. Even, and, but, so with something that's this expensive, you would assume that people have figured out tests for faking it,

[8:13] right? Because there's a lot of money involved. Is it, but in other words, like, is it one of these things where it's very hard to tell the difference between where they come from and so you can have people selling one item as another

[8:23] and and Providence just become something you have to kind of take on faith or... Absolutely I think probably, uh, the majority of prefers that are coming from

[8:33] paragord are actually harvested also. Huh. And well, but now the thing is, is that like a lot of things that are faked, right, like wines, you know, there's a difference

[8:43] between, um, fooling an expert and fooling, uh, you know, a relative novice, right? So when you're faking an old Bordeaux, you just have to get close to faking an old

[8:53] Bordeaux, and you're going to 99% of the people aren't going to be able to tell the difference. But sometimes experts can. Sometimes they can't and it has to be done, you know, with actual analysis. But you're saying that even experienced expert truffle eaters and cookers and preparers probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference between, let's say, a Spanish, uh, tuber

[9:14] Milanosporum and an actual French one. I think that they probably could not reliably tell where the troubles had come from. But there's one possible exception to that. And that's what the Italian white truffles. Their aroma, their shape, and their color does vary from one place to another. So truffles from certain reasons are flatter, others are rounder. So that might be one clue for the next week. And do you but do you identify? Do you attribute that to local conditions or to basically, like, almost, you know, not cultivars because it's not cultivated, but varieties, in other words. I think it's more like local conditions sound compacted, soil is how rocky the soil is, whether the truffle has to grow around roots and

[9:58] rocks and things. Okay. So now, when it comes to truffles, right? No matter what they are, they all have, uh, I mean, how do you describe it? They all funky, right? So like almost, they're not, the majority of them are supposed to be found by what, by rodents, things like

[10:15] rodents? You know, yeah, the definition of the word truffle is that they depend on the animals to eat, they're to disperse their spores. The term animal is very broad, so it can be flies or slugs or rodents or mammals. They're even examples of birds dispersing them. But, I mean, but in other words, like, they're not shooting for carnivores specifically. So even though dogs are carnivores. They happen to have good noses. They're not aiming at carnivores. Right, so carnivores are the one group of animals that do not eat truffles. not the one, but they're one major group of animals. It does not eat truffles. So why is it that, I mean, dogs, presumably, are good just because their sniffers are good, and you can train them to sniff out

[10:58] anything. And by the way, you train people how to train their dogs, right? We do. Yeah. You sent me some, he actually, he sent me some information on training. I was able to train my black lab that my smaller dog hasn't got taken to training it in general, but I was able to train major big dog, my lab, to find truffle oil anywhere in my

[11:19] yard. But I wasn't able to find any tuber, uh, any truffles on my on my property anywhere. But my, uh, like professor also sent me, or Charles also sent me some, uh, Oregon truffles, which we'll talk about in a minute. And I was able to get major fairly easily to go find the shavings from the outside of it all over my apartment. So it's not like, it's not rocket science. If you have a good dog with a good nose who can follow basic commands, you can train them to go look for truffles on your property, yes?

[11:47] That's, that's right. It's very easy. Yeah. Anyway, so we'll get back to that in a minute. But my main question is, is that why would something that smells animally

[11:57] attract, uh, non-carnivores, herbivores? It seems strange. If I was going to attract an herbivore. If I wanted to track flies I get, right? You want to have some sort of like weird, funky animal carrying something, right? Some process of something doing something funky. But with like a mouse, like, what the heck? Like, why wouldn't it give off some sort of like delicious carrot smell or some sort of like something that you think would attract an herbivore?

[12:24] Why does it give off these kind of animal notes? I mean, other words, my point is, are the animals looking for something other than food? Boom, boom, boom, but then they find it. like, I can eat this thing and they eat it? I mean, what do you think? Yeah, I think all those things. Um, I think it's very likely that the truffles and the animals, the dispersements have could

[12:42] evolve, and the different truffles tune their aroma to the physiology of the animal, they're trying to attract. So different truffles are wildly different from each other. Some of them probably do smell like carrots, others smell like fruit. Some smell like juicy fruit gum. Do you like, do you like juicy fruit gum? Well, you know, it's interesting when you find it out in the, in the dry forest, up a tree line, some beautiful setting. It's an, it's an amazing experience, this smells juicy, gum, gum coming out of the ground. Fair, fair. Now, so now here's the point that I think one of your main, and by the way, you guys should know, anyone who's near Portland or, you know, near that

[13:24] area next week is the Oregon Truffle Festival that actually you host, Charles, that I'm going to be going to along with Peter Meehan from Lucky Peach and Harold

[13:34] McGee. We're all going together and we're going to go out and find truffles and cook with truffles and eat with truffles. And it's a it's a grand old time. And we actually get to meet in person. Um, but, um, So, when you're talking Oregon truffles, one of the things that you get kind of, everyone, if, let's, everyone's

[13:52] biased, and they really like the, you know, the, like the, um, you know, the classic uh, tuber magnetum white truffle from

[13:59] Italy, or the perigore, the uh, black truffle, tuber, Milanosform, and everyone's like, these are the

[14:04] best, everything else blows. And, um, partly, I think one of the, your points is, is that most of the other truffles are not harvested in a way that is going to produce good truffles, which will have you talk about in a minute.

[14:17] But I think the other thing is, is that people don't allow for difference, right? So they can just be these other truffles, like the Oregon truffles that we're going to talk about, they can just be different. They don't have to be the same thing, right? No, they're wildly different. The Oregon white truffle smells like pineapple where the Italian white truffle smells like garlic. They're wildly different from each other and they're used in different ways. And I actually find, in my experience, that people's preferences are kind of set by the truffles that they experience first. By the way, Stasi, are you a big truffle person? You like truffles? I like white ones. I don't like black ones. You don't like black ones? Yeah, she's, well, Nastasia only likes either, either she, she wants the most expensive possible, the most expensive possible one. And by the way, I brought, I have with me the left, what's left of my stash of truffles. We're gonna shave them on top of the pizza that we have here at lunch with the birdas, but I bought the worst, like the crappiest truffle shaver. I went to freaking, uh, Sur La Tab and bought this, and it's made in Italy, but it's just garbage. It's just the garb most garbage truffle shaver. By the way, what we're at before we get into this. Are you a believer in trimming off the outside with

[15:24] a paring knife or are you a rubbing person? Are you, how do you like to do it? I think actually there's an aesthetic appeal to having the rind around the edge of the slice. I keep it on. And then, but do you like, then, do you rub it, or do you don't wash them, right? I mean what do you do? Oh, we do wash them. Yeah. You don't want the soil on the truffles. So you just wash pat dry and then shave? Yes exactly. All right. So you're not a believer in pairing them down. Do you think you're throwing stuff away, or are you just like, you like that, just like that line around it that shows the difference in color, the outside of it? Yeah, that line on the outside is attractive. It's part of, it's actually a quality, uh, criterion, uh, truffle

[16:06] that's, the size that will fit through a shaver. It's nice and round so that you can get that entire line. actually makes that a more attractive trouble. Right. Okay, now, um, now, the two main truffles that you guys are doing, 1st of all, one of them, the Oregon black truffle

[16:20] isn't isn't a tuber species, it's a different species, right? That's right. It's lutangium. And then is that is it like a super closely related or no? They are fairly closely related. As are the desert truffles from North Africa. They're all in... But I noticed... When you cut open the Oregon, uh, black truffle, the winter black truffle, whatever you want to call it,

[16:44] the, the black lines on the inside aren't as distinct as they are on like a Milana sporum. It's like much more it's like gray and cream instead of like like blackish gray and cream. Would you say that's accurate or no? Well, it varies. And actually, the appearance of the interior, the truffle is a good indicator of the quality of the truffle. So the more contrast there is, the more black and white they are, that's a more mature truffle. And the same is true for the Oregon black truffles. But instead of marbling on the interior, Oregon black couples are

[17:14] kind of salt and pepper, speckled, black and white. Right. So maybe that's what I was focusing on. Now, the also the Oregon black truffle, it seemed to have kind of like a lot of more kind of

[17:26] roasty soy kind of notes than the white one did, which, as you say, is

[17:31] more has more kind of fruity, not in a bad way, but like solvent the high notes, right?

[17:37] So the white one is more like a high note truffle and the other one's more like a roasty thing. Do you ever use them together, complement each other? We do use them together often. But actually, you're telling me that you're getting these roasting notes from the black truffle tells me a lot about that truffle. The black truffles have an enormous variety of aromas that they can produce. And when they're youngest, they're very, very fruity and sweet. And they develop more savory, and it's later on. Well, I actually took some of them. It smelled sweeter, and I made an ice cream out of the, I actually thought I was gonna like the black ice cream a lot more than the white one, and the white one was more

[18:13] animally. Also, the white one had more kind of classic mushroom notes to the taste than, uh, I mean, it had those these, like, truffle notes as well, but it also has the white, uh,

[18:22] which I guess what's the, what's the species there. It's uh, uh, tuber Oregonese, right? The, like that one, along with the truffle notes, had some classic mushroom notes, at least when it was made into an ice cream. I mean, do you agree with that or no? Well, yes, and actually, the way you prepare the truffle, uh, can influence whether or not you produce that mushroom

[18:45] aroma, when you, um, So when you 1st said that, it made me think that you had graded the truffle, the shredded it. And the white? I did. In the ice cream, for the white one, yes, I did. That, that mushroomy note is a product of the tissue damage from grading the truffle.

[19:07] Huh, so if you don't want that, you just leave it whole, or... Or just, um, create less surface area. Just use a single slice, something like that. Yeah, I slice the heck out of it, and then macerated it in cream and egg yolk, and then spun it into an ice cream. Yeah. There's an interesting byproduct, which is, uh, that mushroom we, uh, compound is one octane trio, just the smell of mushroom.

[19:31] And it's, uh, is not present in a fresh truck. And it only, it only is produced by the truffle when the truffle is damaged, and it's most noticeable when the truffle is frozen, and it starts, it's an unattractive aroma, it's something you don't really want it. Really? I don't know. I like the taste of mushrooms. I can understand why you're saying, if it's an indicator that someone did something they shouldn't have, right, then I can see how

[19:58] it's, it's kind of like, it's like any trained olive oil person hates any sort of fusty or like any sort of like fermented notes in their, in their olive oil, whereas people who haven't been trained to hate it, don't hate it. You know what I mean? So it's, it's, uh, so in other words, when people, when they're buying, um, like, for instance, expensive white truffles, and they're testing to see whether they've been frozen or not. What they're looking for is a mushroom note. Well, it's obvious when a truffle has been frozen. It's soft, it loses its integrity. The marbling is gone in the interior. frozen truffle was ruined. Is there any way to, is there any good way to freeze a truffle? Like, in other words, like if I were to do it quickly, like in liquid nitrogen? Can I preserve the structure of it without ruining it, or is it just hosed entirely? Well that would be interesting to try. Uh, I imagine it's the ice crystals forming in the interior that, uh, damages the tissue and invokes that enblematic reaction to produce the

[20:50] lenox in trio. Right, well, truffles are quite light very quickly. That might not have a chance to happen. Yeah, but you can't freeze them that quickly because they're so light. I mean, that's the thing. It's like, I imagine that it's fairly poor conductance through a truffle because they have a lot of air in them. So I wouldn't imagine that you could get as rapid a freezing as you would like. So in other words, so when you freeze an egg yolk, uh, slowly, you denature the proteins to the extent that the egg yolk remains solid after it thaws. If you liquid nitrogen freeze in egg yolk, then uh, when you thaw it again, it goes runny because the, it hasn't had that, it didn't have the time to complex as it was going down as it was

[21:27] freezing. And so it comes back basically to its raw state again. But, you know, egg yolks can be egg yolks are very high in water and dense. And so it's fairly easy to freeze them fairly quickly. I imagine a truffle, which is much, much lighter than water,

[21:43] uh, would um, probably not be as easy to freeze quickly. Although we could test it. Hell, we could test it. Yeah, that'd be interesting. The one thing, though, I think it's important to know, is that the value of a truffle is the aroma itself. Not the body of the organism. So, if you capture the aroma in something else, that's the most authentic,

[22:04] authentic way to store truffles, at least to store the experience of the trouble. So to capture that arona in some kind of fatty food, say eggs, or

[22:14] cheese, or meat? Right. It's the best way to store it, rather than freezing it. I tell you, my whole refrigerator smelled like them when the stuff was in

[22:24] there, and we've become accustomed to it now in the studio, but we have them here in the studio inside of their plastic containers, and they still, the aroma. The aroma goes right through a plastic deli container and like into, I mean, there's, you know, fills up the whole, the whole area. Now, but to go back to the aroma and like how much days versus cooking. So the argument against, uh, what's the, uh, the truth to sheen, the Chinese truffle, which truffle is that? Sorry, the bad connection. You said, well, the difference between the, no, no, like, what truffle variety? So one time when I was in France, I went to Rongis, which is their market and I was talking to their truffle guys. Uh, and then they they showed me these, like, basically these Chinese truffles, which they

[23:06] called Troof de Sheen. And then the guy said to me, he's like, they smell fine when they're, you know, in this box. He says, but they lose everything when you use them and so they're relatively useless. So what about the, 1st of all, what species is the, is the Chinese truffle that they're selling? And secondly, what about this? Like, uh, they, they don't maintain their odor when they're being

[23:29] used um, in a culinary sense, and is there just strictly like more odorant to stay around in like a melanosporum or uh, magnetum than there is in some of these other species?

[23:41] Oh, that Chinese truffles are interesting. That's a complex species. There's vast diversity in China that people are discovering right now. So there are any number of species it could be. The most likely species is tuber indicum, which is very closely related to the French

[23:56] black tuber Milanus forum. But the reason, I think the primary reason, that they have such a bad reputation, and their prices are so low. is because of the way they're harvested, they're harvested with rakes, like potatoes, and another difference between a truffle and a mushroom.

[24:16] So, the truffle needs to be ripe in order to have its culinary value. So, like, a fruit in that sense. It's, uh, there's nothing to gain by harvesting them immature the way there is with a porcini or cintrelle. So you have to let them mature. And each truffle ripens at a different time over a three month period typically. So an indiscriminate way of harvesting them produces mostly immature truffles that have no culinary value. So that's the primary problem. So, and you say that's the same problem with Oregon truffles, right? The majority of domestic truffles that are harvested, are not

[24:53] harvested using dogs or other form of animals smelling, right? Right. Right. That is the, that is the main reason. Oregon truffles, historically, it's been inexpensive and unappreciated. And so, you're on kind of, like, a mission, you and your cohorts are on a mission to basically say, look it, um, we're

[25:15] gonna sell these ones that are harvested by dogs. Now, uh, not harvested by, but c- found by, hunted by uh, by dogs. But, you know, one of the problems I've noticed with lots of things in this country, for instance,

[25:28] country ham is to comes to mind because it's something I've worked with a lot, is that when you don't have an easy way for consumers to know what they're purchasing,

[25:39] right? It's hard to get the extra value on top

[25:44] of what you're doing. So, you know, and I was talking to the country hand producers. I was like, look at, you know, country ham is hugely widely variant qualities. And, you know, the definition is basically just based on a particular procedure. Do you have some sort of label or consortium or some sort of way that a consumer could very easily tell, you know,

[26:07] this, this one other than assuming that they have knowledge and they can smell it and they'd be like, this one has a great aroma and this one is relatively

[26:15] useless. Uh, is there some sort of like way that you guys are trying to get together to

[26:20] uh, let the consumer know what's what? There's a lot of conversation about that. But it hasn't happened. There's no certification yet. But it is obvious. The difference is obvious. Anyone can tell. It's the difference between a truffle that has no aroma and a truffle that has lots of aroma. Right, but someone could, someone could have a jar full of rice and truffles at their place, have like one or

[26:43] two ones that are decent, that happen to be decent, and it stinks up the whole truffle jar, and then you buy the one, you know, that got raked

[26:51] out and you're host, right? I mean, like, you know, you take it home and you're ruined. That's right. You have to sniff every single truffle. Each truffle needs to have a strong aroma of its own. Just smelling the truffles in a jar is not good enough. Now, how long, like, like, uh, so how long do you think these suckers last? Like, how long does one of these last verses? Is there any difference in keeping time for an Oregon truffle versus for, like, one of the European varieties or no? Oh, well, there probably is. And it really depends on what characteristics you're looking at. European trouble will stay intact longer, but it loses its aroma

[27:26] just as fast. So in terms of their real value, their culinary value, the shelf lives are comparable, and it's just a few days long. By the time the truffle is a wheat gold, it's lost most of its aroma. Even under refrigeration. Even in refrigeration, uh, and regardless of what species it is, but there are exceptions. I mean, we've managed to keep trestles in great condition for 10 days or 2 weeks. It can happen. And the storage conditions make a huge difference in how long the truffle lasts. What's the optimal condition? Well, a truffle was alive, and it needs oxygen. You need to let them breathe. But if you give it too much oxygen, it'll expire more quickly. So it's, it's regulating the oxygen in the CO2 in the container. where you're storing them, that will extend the shelf life. So, we keep them in, like, a toughware container in the refrigerator, with a paper towel underneath to absorb excess moisture. That's another thing. You need to keep the surface of the troubled run. Or it'll just start to like, just start to go soft and crazy, right? Right, you may have noticed that with your black truffles. They got wet looking. You have to block them dry every day. Some got wet looking and some didn't. Yeah, it was like, you know, you couldn't tell. You know what I mean? But commercially, is there, like, can you can extend it by tightly controlling the oxygen in the environment

[28:48] or no? You know, one of our speakers at the Oregon Truffle Festival had a patent on an edible film that just limited the oxygen supply to the truffle and extended the shelf life.

[28:59] When you say extended, but extended it at maximum quality, or is it extended it at okay quality? In other words, are you saying that, like, you're going to get the perfect experience or you're going to get, like, 80% of the experience once you extend the shelf life? Well, that's a great question. I don't know the answer. Yeah. Um, huh. So when you're talking, like, you only have a couple of days, like, how fast are these things getting to market? In other words, can you enjoy these things on the east coast or is this like a, you know, west coast or done kind of a situation? I do think truffles are the kind of food that it's their best experienced at the source. So it's the kind of food you need to travel for. But we can definitely get a good quality truffle to the east

[29:40] coast in a, in a day. But is that something you're interested in? Are you interested in extending the range or are you more interested in promoting tourism to Oregon? Oh, both. We'd love to have a thriving truffle industry on your. What do you think about the contract, you like those things? We definitely invite people to come to Oregon to experience hunting them and experiencing them their source. There's one interesting phenomenon. When you're using a dog to find the Oregon white truffles in particular, there's this

[30:08] toughest minty aroma that comes out of the ground that only lasts a few minutes. Right when you get it out... mean? I'm sorry? Right when you get it out? Right when you get it out? This is beautiful aroma that only lasts a very, very short time. Can you capture it in alcohol? You might be able to. A lot of the aroma compounds are soluble in alcohol. What do you

[30:33] think, before I forget, what do you think of the pecan truffle? You're a competitor down east there? Do you like those things or no? Well, actually, we have a customer who's the 1st commercial grower of pecan truffles on inoculated trees. And that's in southeast Georgia. So, no, they're not competitors. We actually sell the countries with the calm truffles on their roots. I think the pecan truffles are very good. The smell is like malt balls. It's not particularly powerful, but it is attractive. Yeah, okay. So you're not you're like, you're not a huge fan is what I'm hearing. You're like, you're like, they look good from a mycologist point of view, but not your favorite culinary

[31:09] truffle. I think they're great. You'll never hear me express a preference from one truffle over another. Oh, yeah? Well, you know, my last name's Arnold, and they found a truffle in the Arnold Arboretum,

[31:20] and the, I don't know where the, I don't know whether you know, um, the, the person, Matthew Smith, wrote the article, yeah. And he said that, and I'd like to get your opinion on this because you, when I spoke on the phone with you a couple months ago, you said that there's undoubtedly truffle species in

[31:37] Connecticut, where I am. And he writes, New England's acidic soil, harsh winters, and

[31:42] year-round precipitation are, in quotes, not optimal for truffles. At least not the European varieties that people usually eat. Is that true that, like, New England soil, like, we're going to have them, but probably not delicious ones, or do you disagree with his assessment? I do disagree with this assessment. I think it's, uh, certainly the

[32:01] winners are cold too cold for in the northeast. too cold for tuber Milanus forum. But there's still the tuberborky that was found in the Arnold Arboretum. Uh, this, you know, introduced DCs. And so some of those European truffles are already living and fruiting in the Northeast. And then they're native species. There's two Raccanoliculatum and tuberleonia that both live in the northeast naturally. You actually inoculated some trees up in stone barns, right? Well, you're right. We shipped some trees with the, to receive them, the burgundy trouble. Did they work out or no? Are they growing? They were planted just a year ago and I'd love to go visit them. I don't know how they do it. Listen, if you ever come out to in the Connecticut area, I'll take, you know, come up and I want you to find whatever truffles we have here. You have an open invite to come find whatever, like I say, we

[32:53] have uh, hemlocks, we have uh, 3 or 4 varieties of hickory, 3 or 4 varieties of oak, mostly of the red slash

[33:02] black oak group. Uh, so, you know, anyway, you're all. Any of those trees? In fact, all of those trees do have truffles living on their roots. I would love to find truffles in Central Park. I know they're there. Well, why don't you should do it. Do you ever come to New York? You, you know, you can bring my dog. I would like to. I actually just heard a lecture about a mycologist in New Hampshire doing a study on truffles, and he's finding unbelievable numbers of truffles in New Hampshire. Well, you know, listen, next time you're in New York, we'll take my dog up to Central Park and you can, you know, show them where to show them where to look out. Um, I should be clear. There are 100s of species of troubles and only a few that have culmonary value. Well, that's the thing. So when you say only if you have culinary value, they all have some sort of smell, right? Obviously, are they wouldn't be found, but you're saying a lot of the smells are unpleasant or they're just not strong enough to have a culinary value? Some of them are unpleasant. Some of them are really offensive, horrible smells. The kinds of things that flies would love. Others are really interesting smells like the juicy fruit gum, but that's not a truffle that, I think, would ever have any culinary value. Why not, like, why not, like, I mean, people like candy cat mushrooms, 'cause they're sweet, right? And they have, like, those candy kind of aromas, like, why not? In other words, like, my whole point is, is that you shouldn't try to have a, you shouldn't try to have something pretend that it's something else, right? But like maybe it has some sort of use on its own, no? Oh, absolutely. Oh, there's, there's, lots of truffles that are unrelated to the, to the tuber

[34:34] species and Lucangium and desert truffles. They're fundamentally different, but also have wonderful aromas. Definitely farewell with a lot of foods. So what's the price by it? the going price for the Oregon truffles? Well, that's interesting, and now that we've introduced dogs, we've seen a price increase by about a factor of 10.

[34:52] So the price is bifurcated. The bulk of the truffles are still harvested with rakes, and their prices are low. You can probably buy either species for $150 a pound. And how much is, like, a golf ball size black truffle? How much is that weigh? How many to the pound? Oh, let's say it's a 10th of a pound. Okay, so that's 10 bucks. With the dog harvest, the truffles are selling for prices comparable to

[35:17] Super Milanas for. So it's $10 for a raked golf ball and it's $100 for a hunted golf ball. Uh, that would be right. All right, cool. All right. So, like, I look forward to meeting you and we'll talk more about it. No one called in their truffle. By the way, why is that? We actually do have a trouble... We have a trouble reallying question. Let's do it. Let's do it. they're on the phone or they're on the line. All right. Caller, you're on the air with Dr. La Fever. Hey, David Salvin Schultz and Houston. How are you? Nice. So, Charles, I'll let you know. Alvin Schultz, friend of ours, uh, in Texas, believes that Oregon truffles are, uh,

[35:59] this is a show parlance. you'll have to excuse us enemies of quality. And so Alvin, go ahead. So, I've been rethinking that statement. It might have been harsh. I think I would agree with you on I think it's a different product, right? And I guess my question for the doctor is, uh, you know, how do you find a

[36:15] good reputable Oregon truffle dealer that tarvesting with dogs versus the, uh,

[36:20] the poorly harvested product? My experience with organ truffles in the past is not great. especially compared to the European uh counterparts there. I think all dog hunted. I'll harvest it. Charles, did you hear that? Uh, I, it's really rough to hear it, but I think I understood the question is, how do you find a good truffle dealer who, uh,

[36:42] usually the dog drives the truffles, because the college experiences that Oregon truffles really just don't perform as well as the European species?

[36:49] Correct. Yeah, specifically for I rub the old dealer for organ truffles. Yeah, reputable dealer for Oregon truffles. You got anyone? Uh, I do. And I know them personally, not the name of their company. So, uh, uh, a harvester named John Getz, G-E-T-Z, who I would refer to anybody. Um, he's exclusively using dogs, and it, it goes beyond that, not just using dogs for the quality control, but then grading the

[37:21] truffles, to the point where what you're receiving is all good. So that's his company is one that I can recommend. They're in Florence, Oregon. TETZ, sir. Yeah, got it. That he's an individual. Have you tried roto zapping truffle at all? Me? No. Yeah. No, I haven't done any distillation work with it because my road of app, since we closed the bar down, has been packed. But, you know, I'd love to try that sometime. Have you Professor, have you done distillation work with truffles? Well, you certainly could. The thing is, the truffle is continuously giving off more and more aroma. So you don't really want to kill it. If you want to capture that aroma, you might not want to heat it or freeze it or do anything. You want to leave it intact and healthy and alive, and somehow just capture the stream of gas coming off of it. But we can distill at basically, we can distill it at room temperature in a

[38:18] roto vap. So we do vacuum distillation, and you're not heating it at all. The question is, is, would the, would the bath in, so, Alvin, what I would do, is I would basically, uh, put like an excluder, almost, and put the truffle in between the alcohol vapor and the, um, put the truffle between the

[38:37] alcohol, vapor, and, you know, in other words, have your alcohol in your distillation flask, and then have like a bump

[38:43] flash there that you shove the truffle into, and then do the evaporation with the alcohol going through it. So you could capture this stuff without actually having to bathe the truffle in alcohol, which might, you know, hose it down. But I would remember, so Charles, you'll correct me if I'm wrong. Like, how long can it survive in an oxygen depleted environment? Because Rotovap is basically in a vacuum. So it's going to be in a vacuum environment for, I don't know, 35, 40 minutes at

[39:09] the minimum. Is that going to totally kill it right there, or will it last for a while in a vacuum environment? Uh, you wouldn't want to subject it so much vacuum that it damages the tissue, but I think it could survive for a while in those conditions. You might need to periodically refresh the oxygen to keep the truffle alive so it continues to produce the aroma. But I think it would be fine to do that. Okay, you're saying pass the vapor through it, almost like a pachuga distillation, where they're hanging the chicken

[39:36] crust, yeah? Well, exactly. I mean, what, I guess, what Charles is saying, is that you have this truffle, you spent the money on it. It's going to continue to make aroma for, you know, for several days. So you want to continue to capture that aroma for several days rather than actually cutting it into it and basically ending that truffles aroma production right away by either cutting it and consuming it like we do classically when you could be capturing it over a long period of time.

[39:59] And so I guess what I'm saying is, yeah, if you did it, if you bathe it in alcohol, it might kill it, who knows? I don't know, where, you know, would you know, yeah, yeah. Whereas if it's just, if it's in, uh, you know, in, in an alcohol vapor environment for, you know, 30 minutes and maybe then you let it come back up and let it bring its aroma back and do it again, you could possibly capture a lot more of the

[40:23] aroma. In fact, you could almost probably do it. The, the vapor equivalent of a soxlit extraction where you're, you know, you could probably use yesterday's truffle booze and then redistill that again through the, through the, you know, the, the reoxygenated truffle, like three,

[40:41] four times to get to really concentrate the heck out of it. I don't know. I'm just like saying like the kinds of things that I might try if I had my my rotovap up and running. If it may not even require your rotavap in the sense that the truffle aroma will naturally just dissolving the alcohol.

[40:58] So we actually have a partner. The Oregon Truffle Festival has a partner in Boron distillery that's making a truffle vodka. And they can do it in two ways. One is to just set the truffle next to the alcohol, and the aroma accumulates in the alcohol. The other way is to extract the aroma from the truffle by immersing it in alcohol, but you'll get more aroma the first. Because it can produce it for a longer period of time. Right, right. Presumably, you'll get a higher instantaneous concentration through maceration, but you're saying that the net effect over several days of letting it sit above the alcohol is a higher end

[41:29] concentration. Right, right, exactly. And also, there's that problem of the mushroom equality. One octane 3L when you macerate the truffle. What about, has that person done any tests with, like, convection? Like, actually, like, you know, convecting the surface of the, of the headspace to try to get

[41:47] a, you know, a faster, more complete, um, aroma removal from

[41:54] the, from the truffle or no? I don't know their process exactly, but um, I'm not aware that they've done it. That's what I would bring. Right now, it's true. Lemoncello, aren't they? Yeah, well, that's the thing. Remember, there's a crazy, that crazy lemon cello person who never lets the

[42:08] peels touch the thing and it was like all the, all the buzz of the lemon cello internets, uh, a couple years ago. Yeah, I'm sure you could do the same thing. Although I think a lot of the components in lemon cello aren't nearly as volatile and aromatic as a truffle.

[42:23] So you probably have better shot with a truffle. I, you know, part of that process was allowing the lemons to become saturated with the

[42:31] alcohol and then drip the extract down below. That would actually ruin the truffle. And on some level, you want to have an airflow past the truffles toward the alcohol so that you don't pickle the truffles in the process, because the alcohol will also go the other

[42:43] direction and feel the trouble. You're saying fresh air, or do you think that alcohol vapor is gonna hurt it too? The alcohol vapor does accumulate in the truffle. Hmm. So, hmm. If anyone wants to send me some organ truffle, my

[43:00] roto is up and running. I'd be happy to just spin those around for you. I got a quick egg dog update for you if you want that today or I can call back another week. No, give me some eggnog. Nastasi loves eggnog. Remind everyone, I've been doing an eggnog vertical. I just built the 3rd year, uh, and I tasted the George Washington and Michael Roman's recipe

[43:21] from early 2015, January 2015. Uh, Roman, uh, update is that it tastes like eggnog. It tastes better, but not so dramatic, uh, Washington, which is, I think, around 12 and a half or 11.5%, getting fun,

[43:37] like... Well, Alvin, you're breaking up. What happened to Washington's, which is a lower proof? It gets real funky, like here, fermented milk and goat cheese, blue cheese, but if you shake it over ice, it's not on toilet, but probably wouldn't drink

[43:52] too. So you're saying it's an acquired taste, much like, much like, uh, meat, like, well, game meat that's been aged for a long time. I'm not familiar with that, but the tasting method I definitely get is like caffeir yogurt. Yeah, I don't know that I want to pound that. See, I'm not an eggnog. I like eggnog. Nastasi loves eggnog. I like eggnog. I don't know that I want like a goaty barnyardy egg, eggnog. I'm just looking at nastasias. Do you have one? You would probably enjoy one, but I haven't found anyone that would enjoy, too. Yeah, so it's a one and done. It's not a pounder. It's one of those things that people wrinkle at their face and go, interesting. Yeah. Yeah, nice. But Romans is aging nicely. So, uh, you know, come back next year with the uh, the 4th year of the vertical. All right, cool. Yeah let us know. I always want, I always want eggnog updates, as does, uh, you know, many of the, like Nick Bennett does it. Piper Christensen, like a bunch of people we know are big on the aging eggnog. So yeah, keep bringing it back. Yeah, maybe I'll send you guys some, actually, if you want to take it. It's obviously rim temperatures stable at this place, so. Yeah, I'd love to try it. I have to send it to Roberta. Attention, you guys? Uh, no, uh, send it to uh, like you have Anastasi's email, just, like, center one. I'll give you my personal address. And ship it there. Yeah, but not over the air. Even she's not that crazy to give her address over the air. But, um, yeah, yeah, I'd love to try it. We'll try it on the Earth. All right, cool. All right, so, Nastasia, I have time for a couple of, to take a couple of, I think you should finish up with Charles and... Charles, Charles. people have these questions, no? We're going to get all the questions. I have a question on pressure cooking vegetables, on salting. I have a question on rabbits. Luckily, John's question on rabbits. The rabbits aren't coming back for another couple of months. I can wait on his rabbit question. And then I have, uh, the question is, he has all these rabbits, and he lives in a suburban. He wants to catch them and eat them and should he do that or should he not? I have one on the color of cooking meat, which I think is interesting. Actually, I'm doing a lot of work on that now for my next book, for the low temperature book, the color of meat and cooking low temperature is like super important. Should I do? So, Charles, any of those topics interest you? We can answer one of those questions and the rest I can put off till next week. Uh, I'm not sure that means I'm really pretending to trouble. No, yeah, they're not, they're not truffle. about the alcohol conversation, though. What do you say? There's another way to incorporate a couple of Roman alcohol, which is to add some, something fatty. You, you, it's missing

[46:29] comments, it's something fatty. It's flipped very badly to the alcohol. Actually, have a partner, folks and people, brewery, that's truffle beer, that's very authentic work. Yeah, well, fat washing, obviously, is a technique that,

[46:46] uh, yeah, we all know, know and love. So you're saying basically do almost like a non-fluorage, like have it transferred to the oil because it can stay over the oil head space indefinitely without damaging the truffle and then mix that with the alcohol and then take the fat off. You can get a fairly, you think you can get a fairly, um, efficient extraction that way. Yes, I think so. Actually, I think the oil is more soluble in oil than it is in alcohol. Well, obviously, I guess truffle oil, right? So then you fat wash the truffle oil. Do you want to, everybody who listens to this show knows that truffle oil is garbage and an enemy of quality and just like the worst thing, you actually say that you have good ones, but like the commercial stuff, do

[47:24] you do you feel the need to say something negative about it or do you just accept that everyone here already knows that it's a garbage product? I mean, it was authentic truffle oil. It does exist. I don't know who to refer to together, though. Yeah, yeah. Here's who yeah, Chef makes it themselves. What do you say? Usually a chef makes their own truffle oil. The authentic truffle oils are not put in bottles and sold in the store. All right, well, Charles, I look forward to meeting you next week, and McGee and me and I are

[47:56] gonna eat the heck out of some Oregon truffles, and hopefully find some, maybe even get some of that minty smell right out of the ground. I'll report back to cooking issues. But I got to, I'll do one. I do the rabbits. I do rabbits. I thought you said that was the longest. It is, but it's like, it's also the easiest one to answer. The rest of them take a lot longer. So John writes in from New Jersey. Hello, Dave, and Cooking Issues crew every year when spring arrives. Those of us in the suburbs face the scourge of an R selected mammalian population boom. The beasts we deal with may look all cute and cuddly, but in reality, they are ravenous rodents with no regard for modern suburban homeowner priorities.

[48:27] I speak, of course, of the Eastern cottontail rabbit. They annihilate our carefully tended gardens, destroy our nascent fruit and vegetable patches and leave poop all over our lawns and patios, and they breed like rabbits. Yeah, yeah, nice day. Well, last year, a local fox was able to keep the population down. This year, I'm going to take things into my own hands. I've considered going straight up Carl Spackler, which is, by the way, the guy from Caddy Shack, Bill Murray's character from Caddy Shack. Carl Spackler and dynamiting the neighborhood, but I think it might be more delicious to trap the rabbits and save the meat for culinary

[48:56] use. In doing my research, I've seen various comments online about how suburban rabbits are not safe to

[49:02] eat and that the meat will be overrun with parasites and other non-good things. This doesn't seem right to me. Are rabbits really that different from other wild game? That's my question. What's your advice on safe and delicious methods of slaughtering, handling, and cooking these rabbits? I was thinking of freezing the meat before low temp cooking them to pasteurization, wasn't sure if that was overkill or not. I'm also slightly worried about freaking out my wife and kids and all our friends with this project. But with a delicious result, I expect they'll get over it. Well, okay. Uh, thanks, uh, John from uh, New Jersey. Okay, 1st of all, they're not going to get over it. Let me just tell you this. They are not going to get over it. People, like some people will get over it. Like, if you grew up in a hunting household. where people like go out and hunt things, then they're going to be fine with it. If you didn't grow up in that environment, a lot of times they're like, meat comes from a store, meat is raised for being

[49:50] killed and you can't get people around it. It's just weird. You have to suss out your own family on this, but if they if they say ahead of time that they're not going to be okay with it, then believe me, they're not going to be okay with

[50:01] it. I mean, I'm okay with it. Now, your 2nd thing is, is what's the problem with rabbits? Now. I also looked online for this. And some people are like wildly crazy worried

[50:13] that like somehow suburban, uh, you know, rabbits are like licking motor oil and like, you know, I don't know, I don't know, doing some sort of like

[50:21] terrible uh, stuff. But if you're willing to eat the products that you grow where you are. I don't think rabbits make a habit of licking up motor oil or like

[50:30] cats like eating ethylene glycol or if, you know, uh, you know, with antifreeze, a cat's eating, it kills them. But, you know, I don't I don't know of anything like that. I think that stuff is basically hogwash. What is true is that rabbits in general can have, um, uh,

[50:47] Tularimia, and you want to be careful about it. So, uh, Tularimia. In fact, uh, they get it from tick bites, uh, and and and I guess there's other vectors, but tick bites is one of them. And it is a, um, it is easily transmissible from a rabbit to a human

[51:03] being and there have been cases this happening. And now if you thoroughly cook the animal, you get rid of it, but

[51:09] it is possible to catch it while skinning the rabbits. You have to be careful. What you typically do when you're testing it. And I looked it up online. Um, you know, I looked up, you know, hunting rabbits to Lauremia, because people who hunt rabbits a lot, like this is something they're worried about. They're like, look out for rabbits that look lethargic or sick. And then when you when you eviscerate the rabbit, you look at the liver, and if the liver is kind of spotted or speckled, that's a good sign that that rabbit has

[51:36] tularemia. Now you can, and there's pictures online, you can, you can see in general. As for how to slaughter them because you're not hunting them, you're trapping them, I would go to Adam Dan. I have never slaughtered a rabbit, but it was until very recently the last animal that would be slaughtered right where you were going to eat it.

[51:55] So butcher shops that still wouldn't slaughter pigs or sheep or cows, you know, nearer where their shop is, would still

[52:03] slaughter rabbits in their butcher shop. And this would happen up until fairly recently, even after, way after it was illegal, just because it was very kind of simple to do, and it was considered,

[52:14] it was a thing that many butchers did. That said, I don't know how to do it. But there is a book on it. Adam Danforth's butchering poultry, rabbit, lamb, goat, and pork has a whole section on how to properly and humanely slaughter a rabbit and how to eviscerate it. And I highly recommend his book. He has another one, a whole one on beef, and it's eye-opening on the procedures of how it works. And if you get that book, which is not that expensive on Amazon, the soft cover version of it, you can get an idea of whether you really want to go through with it or

[52:45] not because he goes through all the steps of what needs to happen. So, the 2 things I would look up are, uh, are the

[52:51] Tularemia, how to check for it, how to prevent, uh, you know, you getting it while you're skinning

[52:56] it, because I think, I think certain things can get aerosolized, like blood and stuff when you're skinning it, and then that's where it happens.

[53:02] Again, you can cook it and be safe. And then on how to butcher and slaughter it. Um, you know, go to Adam Danforth. And then if you still want to cook with it later, I'm going to be working on rabbit eventually, but probably not for a month or 2 for my book. So come back, hit me then with some recipes for rabbit doing low temp. Uh, thanks to uh, Charles Lefever from uh, the, the Oregon Truffle

[53:26] Festival, and his company is, um, it's Truffle Tree.com is, or Truffle Tree is his website, uh, but uh, I forget the, uh, what, Charlie, you still there, uh,

[53:35] doctor, what's the name of the company? It's New World Truffier. New World Truffier, and Truffle Tree, Truffletree.com.org is your is your website. Exactly. Truffledree. Yeah, truffledree.com. And thanks, and we'll see you next week on cooking issues.

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