WOM 620

Not worth the truffle?

Are any of the less expensive alternatives to real truffles worth their knock-down price tags?
A white truffle
A white truffle displayed for sale in Alba, Italy. Photograph: Filippo Monteforte/AFP/Getty Images

It might be cold comfort to most of us, but while food crops have suffered one of the worst harvests in decades, it has been a good year for British truffles. The wet weather has produced just the right conditions for the fungi to thrive, and now every man and his pig is hoping to unearth a fortune.

Last week I was in Alba for the White Truffle Fair, where conversely it has been so dry that the sacred ingredient is scarce. This is a region where many take the "Alba madonna" as seriously as football, where the dogs (the idea that they use pigs is, apparently, a "metropolitan history") are insured like canine Michael Flatleys, and where laws extend to forbidding bitches on heat from going into the woods.

It's 9am, and two hours ago a 270g truffle worth over €1,000 was found just where we're heading. Winemaker Silvano Bolmida, his cousin Aldo, and Aldo's dog Mickey take us into the woods. Mickey is 14 and last year a wild boar chewed his knees off. Still, he moves with grace and purpose, hoovering the earth with his snout and dragging Aldo, camouflaged and chain-smoking, behind him. We hold our breath as the dog comes to a halt at the foot of a young poplar. He lifts a leg and urinates extravagantly. Aldo shrugs and we keep going.

When eventually a truffle is found there is a palpable crackle of expectation. Aldo carefully frees the nugget from the fragrant, friable soil and offers it up for a sniff. It is pale cream in colour and as intoxicating as a ripe brie. "E' come la viagra, questo," says Aldo – like viagra. It's an interesting point. For as with other supposed aphrodisiacs, there's no small amount of hokum and hot air surrounding the truffle.

Whether such an ingredient is worth the often extortionate prices charged for it is largely down to the palate of the beholder. My beef is with ingredients that purport to contain truffle that either don't, or do in such minuscule quantities that they'd better deserve their high price tags if Michel Roux Jr had sneezed on them.

The majority of truffle oils, for example, have spent as much time in the society of actual truffle as has a Big Mac. Gordon Ramsay called it "one of the most pungent, ridiculous ingredients ever known to a chef." Here he is adding it to cream cheese and calling it a "chef's dream." Tut tut.

When I ask Silvano Bolmida what he thinks of truffle oil he rolls his eyes. "Don't buy it! It's not truffle. Every year I get given cheese with truffle oil. I taste it, I give it to the dog, the dog won't eat it."

In Italy, barely passable "truffle" pastes are spread on stale bread and offered as part of the free aperitivi served with drinks. In the UK, comparable stuff sells for almost the same price as the set lunch at Petrus (I know, tough call).

There are some decent truffle salts out there. A friend gave me a jar of Tetsuya's gear, which is a punchy £19.95 but has lasted me well over a year without losing much of its aroma. Sprinkled last minute on a bowl of pasta or risotto, it lifts it remarkably. Laura Santtini's, at almost a quarter of the price, lacks any discernible truffle flavour. (I once tried to make my own, using a jar of "preserved" truffles bought from Sainsbury's and a fistful of Maldon. The result was grimly bituminous.)

Butter from the Truffle Hunter is a fine thing to beat through mashed potato, benefiting from the fact that it has actually been near a truffle, while his honey does well trickled over gorgonzola.

The specimen in Alba was the real thing – hell, I'd have eaten the soil surrounding the truffle it was so heady – but alas that real thing costs €3,500/kg. Decent imitations and interpretations are therefore likely also to cost a bob or two. With anything truffle-related I'm afraid it boils down to the old cliché – if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

• James Ramsden was in Italy as a guest of ETM Group

Today's best video