Ten Trees and a Truffle Dog (17 page)

  I collected the ball. This time I held it in front of Snuffle's nose. He sniffed and quickly lost interest. 'Fetch!' The ball came to rest in the same area. Snuffle looked after it, looked at me, and rolled over on his back and barked.

  Perhaps, I reasoned, I needed to throw the ball into the sunshine rather than the shade. Once more I held the truffle ball out for him to sniff. I noted a little more interest this time. 'Fetch!' I threw it with a gentle high lob, the ball landing no more than 10 metres away. Surely even the most lethargic of dogs would be suckered by the seductive odour of the truffle wafting towards us. 'Go on, fetch,' I encouraged. Looking down I discovered that Snuffle was asleep.

  Half an hour later the session continued inside. Tanya held the ball out in front of her for Snuffle to see. I then put my hands over Snuffle's eyes and Tanya hid behind the sofa.

  'Find the ball.' Snuffle padded around the house, nosing in cupboards, eating the odd crumb from the floor and then eventually encountering Tanya.

  'Well done, good boy,' we both encouraged, handing Snuffle some cheese as a reward. We repeated the exercise, this time hiding just the ball.

  'Find the ball, Snuffle, find the ball.' Snuffle immediately jumped up on the sofa and began to scratch vigorously, pawing at the covering and circling aggressively. Putting his front paws down, he raised his head, wagged his tail and barked vigorously. It was a textbook way of indicating that he'd found something. Unfortunately for us, whatever was hidden under the cushion wasn't a truffle. Maybe a previous tenant had had a cocaine habit.

  Over the next few days we continued to devote long periods of time to training. The tennis ball, we decided, wasn't effective, and so we tried truffle-laced saucisson and truffle-laced cheese. Nothing worked. At the beginning of one session I forgot to slice the truffle and instead just played hide and seek with a piece of plain old Gruyère. Inexplicably, Snuffle's level of interest was much higher. That evening I offered him a small plate of leftover truffle risotto. Snuffle sniffed the dish and then turned and walked away, curling up in a distant corner of the house.

  In desperation the following night I prepared what I believe is a culinary one-off, a dish so extreme that not even the most experimental of chefs could ever have conceived it:
poulet fermier de Bresse aux croquants de truffes
.

  To encourage Snuffle to eat, I'd starved him all day, and shortly before I presented the dish he was circling the house, nose to the ground, desperately trying to find even the smallest portion of food.

  'Snuffle,' I called, clanking the dog bowls together to signify supper time. First I introduced small slithers of lightly poached free-range chicken. Then I took out the cheese grater and shaved copious amounts of fresh truffle over the top, before completing the meal with a handful of high quality dried dog food.
'Voilà,'
I cried extravagantly as I placed the meal before my salivating pooch.

  Snuffle sniffed the bowl, looked plaintively up at me, and then began to whine as if in genuine distress. It wasn't difficult to read his thoughts – why the hell had I wrecked a perfectly good meal, a meal he'd been waiting for all day, by shaving truffle all over it? I looked disdainfully back at him as well – of all the dogs in the world, why did I have to get lumbered with the one stubborn enough to resist the supposedly irresistible scent of truffles?

  A week later I happened to be in southern Luberon delivering wine and I stopped off at one of my favourite villages, Cucuron. Offer me a chance to have a glass of wine or a coffee anywhere in Provence, and I would renounce the glitz and glamour of more celebrated villages such as Gordes and instead opt for the simple pleasure of sitting beside the plane-tree-lined
étang
in Cucuron. The play of the light on water and the arrangement of the chairs, so that dappled sunlight teases the face, has combined to produce the most harmonious place to sit and contemplate life – out of high season, of course.

  As I toyed with the ends of my coffee I felt refreshed and upbeat about life. I'd just sold a couple of hundred bottles of wine, the house-building project was finally coming together, Manu had nearly finished the renovation of the new apartment in the farmhouse, Elodie and Tanya both seemed happy – all I needed to complete the positive picture was to show a little more patience with Snuffle. Lost in my thoughts I didn't notice Eric Sapet, the chef of the adjacent restaurant, La Petite Maison, pull up a seat next to me. Years ago I'd written a review of his restaurant for a local magazine and we'd been friends ever since.

  
'Salut, Jamie.'

  
'Salut, Eric.'

  Over his shoulder, through the open side door to his kitchen, I could see his
sous-chefs
. One was methodically working his way through a tray of lobsters, picking the meat from each of the claws, another was glazing an army of lamb chops. Shortly after my review Eric had gained a Michelin star. The accolade hadn't changed him and he remained very much a chef's chef. Small and round with a hunchback from bending over too many pots, his physique declared his love of his chosen profession. For the quality of the food, prices at La Petite Maison remained low. The best thing about Eric, though, was not his cooking but his jovial, friendly nature.

  For a few minutes we sat and exchanged news, and talked a little business. Almost as an afterthought, I mentioned my truffle dog training and getting ahead of myself a little I asked where he bought his truffles and at what price.

  'We pay around nine hundred euros per kilo before Christmas and New Year and about six hundred euros thereafter. I offer truffle dishes until the end of February; after then I find the taste declines.'

  I'd feared that the truffle trade might work like the wine business, with restaurants demanding large discounts and then marking up the product for sale three or even four times. According to Eric, though, the truffle traders were able to set and maintain a price. Demand for the Provençal truffle was intense, with orders coming in from restaurants across the world. Moreover, top chefs only used the fresh product, unwilling to sacrifice the crunchy bite which disappeared on freezing. The season was therefore three months long and truffles were always scarce, with demand outstripping supply and the price per kilo rising consistently with the years. If I could just find some truffles, it appeared selling them would be easy.

  'One thing, though – I only buy from wholesalers.'

  My vision of the easy life, sitting on my terrace, piles of truffles around my feet, taking ever higher bids from international chefs ('Sorry Heston, there's nothing I can do – it's nine hundred euros a kilo or they're off to Gordon') vanished.

  'Why?' I asked in an embarrassingly plaintive voice.

  'First, there's theft; if I buy from just anybody, I have no way of knowing where the truffle has come from; secondly, I only buy truffles with a certificate of origin. I don't have time to examine them all, and eventually some shark is going to slip some Chinese ones in a batch.'

  'Are all restaurants the same?'

  'If they were, nobody would steal truffles.'

  'But the reputable truffle hunter sells to a wholesaler, who presumably takes a cut?'

  'Exactly.'

  At least with truffles the price could justify a middleman, whereas with wine it often couldn't. Before I even had to worry about these issues, there was still the problem of training Snuffle.

  'What have you tried?' asked Eric.

  'Saucisson, cheese, risottos, eggs, salads, you name it – if it's got truffle in it, he won't touch it.'

  'And yet you say he's a high-maintenance dog.'

  'Very,' I said, a little too assertively.

  Eric grinned. 'There's one thing you might like to experiment with; mind you, it's not going to come cheap.'

  He took a pen from the top pocket of his chef's whites and began jotting down a recipe. To read was to salivate.

Cooking with truffles is so simple that even a child can master the art. First, wash the truffle and scrape away any excess mud. Then, cut the truffle in half and slice or grate over anything from salad to scrambled egg. There are, of course, a few tricks of the trade; for example, if cooking a risotto, it's best to leave the rice and truffle in the same jar for a couple of days. This way the individual grains release the infused flavour during cooking, which is then highlighted by the grating, moments before serving, of fresh truffle over the risotto.

  It's also important to be generous – at least 10 grams of truffle per plate is necessary, 15 if you are feeling rich or courting a partner. Apparently, the effect of excessive consumption is so pronounced that for some orders of monks eating truffles is inconsistent with their vow of chastity, so try 20 grams if you have misplaced the Viagra and want to pep up your sex life.

  The fact that truffles are often married with the most basic ingredients means that despite the price tag they are accessible to all. The most famous truffle chef in France is Bruno, who runs an eponymous restaurant near the village of Lorgues in the Var. One might expect his signature dish to be flamboyantly expensive, perhaps a
filet de veau aux
truffes
, but instead its base is one of the most prosaic foods in the world. Served in company canteens topped with anything from prawns to chilli, microwaved in desperation by drunk students, the humble baked potato has no gastronomic pretensions, until, that is, it gets into the hands of Bruno. With a sprinkling of truffle and the secrets of his kitchen he transforms something typically coated in baked beans into mouthfuls of pleasure, where the earthiness of the truffle momentarily blends with the ethereal.

  There is one golden rule of truffle cuisine – never ever expose truffles to high temperatures. Baking, frying, poaching – anything other than scattering them over a prepared dish will kill the flavour and your investment. Rules, however, as Eric Sapet explained, can always be bent. The Provençal truffle, unlike, for example, the Italian white, can sustain a degree of heat and Eric's recipe, which he explained was an old classic of French cooking, took full advantage of this fact. It was, he claimed, an unsurpassable gastronomic experience.

  We tried the recipe that evening. Snuffle, who usually disappeared at the barest whiff of truffle, sat on the floor with his tail wagging and his nose quivering. Reaching for the oven gloves I checked the colour of the pastry. It was just off the required perfect golden brown. I returned the dish to the heat, noting Snuffle's annoyed bark. There was a chance that we'd found the dish that would cure his phobia.

  Tanya laid the table and poured two glasses of wine. The smell of the truffle was almost unbelievably strong. Our open-plan kitchen/diner/sitting room was suffused with a heavy earthy odour.

  'It's like living in a cave,' I said as I pulled the dish from the oven, trying not to trip over Snuffle as I did so.

  If the pastry had served its purpose, it would have shielded the truffle from the heat, allowing it to gently season the other ingredients during the baking process. With the point of my knife I punctured the protective shell and dodged a jet of steam pungent enough to send a monk scurrying for sanctuary.

  'Here goes…' I cut into the millefeuille of truffle and foie gras, serving three thin slices. Tanya and I tasted. A silence followed. Then both of us helped ourselves to another mouthful. Tanya looked up at the ceiling. Judging by the flavours in my mouth she could only be offering thanks to the heavens.

  'This is quite unbelievable. It feels like I'm not tasting truffle, I almost am a truffle,' she finally said.

  'It's like they fed the goose truffle for its entire life,' I added, shaking my head in amazement.

  'It's a shame to give it to the dog.'

  'A real shame.' Both our forks met in mock battle.

  'The French would think it sacrilegious.'

  Tanya mastered her hunger and put the dog bowl on the floor.

  Snuffle padded over, paced in a circle, and sniffed the air. Glancing up at both of us he feigned indifference and turned away, chasing his tail in a circle until he once again faced the bowl.

  'If he's not going to eat it, then I am.' I reached for the food.

  Snuffle was quicker, diving forward and landing like a pouncing cat with both paws either side of the bowl. Momentarily he inhaled and then with a delighted bark he ate his portion in one bite, before repeatedly licking the bowl and begging for more.

T
he day had finally arrived. To celebrate we decided to have breakfast in the village cafe. The winter had been mild and the tables and chairs basked in the March sunshine. Stray dogs ambled past, delivery vans left their hazard lights winking in the street, and high above our heads flaking wooden shutters were thrown open. There was a pleasing hum of activity in which to sit and soak up the medicinal warmth of the sun. A messy dusting of pastry fell across the table as I opened the bag from the
boulangerie
. The croissants were still warm to the touch and neither of us had the willpower to wait until the coffee arrived.