To Die For

Many of my friends consider me a foody but hey, we live in the midwest, in the suburbs, with 2.5 children and 1.5 pets. Suffice it to say, culinary standards are not set high. I am more of a foodie wanna be. I wanna be the expert on all things food. I wanna be able to know what really good food is compared to the best that I can get in my own area. I wanna experience tastes from around the country, around the world. Alas, I am constrained by geography, budget, and pets. A girl can dream and when I dream, when I think of the foods that I will spend the balance of my life in pursuit of, my mind wanders to several gastronomic fairy tales. In other words my food bucket list, the foods I want to eat before I die! Here I present the first food on that list.

Its ironic, I think, that one of the most costly and luxurious foods in the world is a fungus that is rooted out of the ground by a pig. I suppose the caveat is that its a French pig, digging in French dirt, after French fungus and, as we all know, if its French its got epicurean cred. That goes for pigs too. The dirty delight that claims this fame is the truffle. How magical must a mushroom be to have a chocolate confection named for it? That question is what my taste buds long to answer.

So what's the big deal? The supply and demand firestorm that causes the proud truffle to top $3000 a pound has a lot to do with the fact that 18th-century French gastronome Brillat-Savarin called them "diamonds of the kitchen" and that chefs the world wide agree with him. Add to that their slow growth, scarcity, resistance to domestication, and the fact that you have to have a special pig to dig them out of the ground that shares their color and nearly their texture.

How does one enjoy a truffle? This is a question that is poorly answered by the truffle deprived, such as myself, but I've seen enough Iron Chef battles to ferret out a worthy answer. While our afore-mentioned Brillant-Savant claims that truffles should be eaten as a meal unto themselves, most master chef's shave them atop a dish to add a rich, earthy, meatiness to anything from eggs to potatoes to a burger. Speaking of burgers, my own best chance of sampling this spongy morsel is at Burger Bar where you can have them served upon a Kobe beef burger (Kobe, a bucket list food for another day).

This delight won't cost me the hundreds that an ounce of mushroom would cost me on the good eats black market, but for now its still just out of reach of my dining out budget. When or if that day comes you can be sure that I will share my experiences with you, here, in our gathering place of yummy thoughts. Until then, if your own budget is limitless (and I mean literally limitless) then you may have the priviledge to agree with our Savant friend when he claims "Let no one ever confess that he dined where truffles were not. However good any entree may be, it seems bad unless enriched by truffles." Oh to live THAT kind of life!