Truffle sells for $373,000
This 3.3 pound truffle sold for $373,000 at a charity auction this weekend. Macau casino owner Stanley Ho outbid artist Damien Hirst and Sheikh Mansoor Bin Zayed al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi for the white truffle, apparently the largest of its kind found since 1954. A truffle hunter digging near Pisa, Italy dug out the fungus from more than 2.5 feet underground. From Reuters:
Previously on BB:
• Truffle hunting Link
Link"I can say it's very odd. Normally truffles are more round. This looks like the brain of a man ... but it's nice, very nice," said Alfonso Iaccarrino, Italian chef at the Lisboa Hotel, who posed with the mushroom and prepared a four-course meal featuring white truffle dishes at the gala auction event.
Previously on BB:
• Truffle hunting Link
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Jean Dubois from Tom Tagholm's "A Bout De Truffe" would be amazed! http://www.aboutdetruffe.com
To think, at some point in history someone first came upon that thing and said: "Yes, I would like to eat that."
Terry Pratchett suggests somewhere that all the great cuisine comes from the world's poor, because no one would eat the bird's nest if they had a chance to eat the actual bird. It seems likely that the person who first thought "Yes, I would like to eat that" had already eaten all the dirt and tree bark they could stomach.
Mmm, nothing like over-rated, over-priced food. Salty fish eggs, check. Force-fed goose liver, check. Average fungi often gotten illegally, check.
Was Damien Hirst planning to encrust it with diamonds?
No, no, no, my fellow commentators, you have to be in the presence of a truffle to understand! You can only love or hate the all-enveloping aroma (if you put one in your fridge unwrapped, your butter, eggs, cheese, brocolli will be truffleized), it is not a neutral foodstuff.
Gratuitous plug - check out the site: www.altosangrotartufi.com
They better eat it quick:
"A truffle has to be consumed within 20 days of being unearthed. In 2004, a 700g truffle sold for £28,000, only to go mouldy in the safe of a London restaurant." - http://www.guardian.co.uk/italy/story/0,,2220561,00.html
They are extremely temperamental, the fresh ones, they can easily get contaminated through handling or airborne particles. Having said that, a good white truffle with go on perfuming for the good part of two weeks, handling be damned.