Join MYCOSMOS Team : http://www.facebook.com/groups/mycosmos
Cook's
Diamond
Truffle mushrooms
A truffle is the fruiting body of a subterranean Ascomycete fungus, predominantly one of the many species of the genus Tuber. Some of the truffle species are highly prized as a food. French gourmand Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin called truffles "the diamonds of the kitchen".Edible truffles are held in high esteem in Middle Eastern, French, Spanish, Italian, Greek and Georgian cooking, as well as in international haute cuisine. Truffles are ectomycorrhizal fungi and are therefore usually found in close association with the roots of trees. Spore dispersal is accomplished through fungivores, animals that eat fungi.
The origin of the word truffle appears to be the Latin term tuber, meaning "swelling" or "lump", which became tufer- and gave rise to the various European terms: French truffe, Spanish trufa, Danish trøffel, German Trüffel, Swedish tryffel, Dutch truffel, Polish trufel, Serbian тартуф / tartuf and Croatian tartuf. In Portuguese, the words trufa and túbera are synonyms, the latter closer to the Latin term. The German word Kartoffel ("potato") is derived from the Italian tartufo (truffle) because of superficial similarities. Truffles were rarely used during the Middle Ages. Truffle hunting is mentioned by Bartolomeo Platina, the papal historian, in 1481, when he recorded that the sows of Notza were without equal in hunting truffles, but they should be muzzled to prevent them from eating the prize. According to a hadith narrated by Saeed bin Zaid, Muhammad said that truffles are like manna and that water from truffles "heals eye diseases".
During the Renaissance, truffles regained popularity in Europe and were honoured at the court of King Francis I of France. However, it was not until the 17th century that Western (and in particular French) cuisine abandoned "heavy" oriental spices, and rediscovered the natural flavour of foodstuffs. Truffles were very popular in Parisian markets in the 1780s. They were imported seasonally from truffle grounds, where peasants had long enjoyed their secret. Brillat-Savarin (1825) noted characteristically that they were so expensive they appeared only at the dinner tables of great nobles and kept women. A great delicacy was a truffled turkey.