Published on January 18, 2006

The truffle, once deemed ‘witches fare’, is now on offer at Dusit’s D’Sens restaurant in all its sensual glory

What’s the allure of truffles, the gnarly subterranean mushrooms that are hunted with boars and dogs, and look like clumps of mud when they’re dug from the roots of trees?

The perfume, texture and taste. Nothing compares to truffles, which inspire rhapsodic passages although their allure is something darker.

The musky aroma is like the dew that covers a woman’s body on sultry summer nights. The taste is earthy, exhilarating and sensual - almost coarse. The texture is woody yet pliable, with the suppleness of flesh.

The Marquis de Sade served truffles as a prelude to a night of passion. Alexandre Dumas said they “make women more tender and men more loveable”. And two Michelin-star chef Jacques Pourcel, visiting Bangkok earlier this month, called them “the pearl of the mushroom family” for their rarity and extraordinary sensuality.

Raw flecks, crowning a salad or scrambled eggs, fill the air with their scent and give simple ingredients an ethereal quality. Shavings cooked in a sauce, soup, vegetable or meat imparts a mysterious, forbidden allure.

The carnal qualities of the mushrooms, combined with their scarcity this year due to a dry summer and cold winter, have driven the price of extra-grade black winter truffles from Perigord, France, to ?1,500 (Bt70,000) a kilogram and white winter truffles from Alba, Italy, to ?3,100.

So, it’s no surprise that the January truffle menu that Pourcel introduced at D’Sens, the restaurant atop the Dusit Thani hotel, costs Bt6,500++ a person. What astounds is how well it fulfils its ambrosial promise.

The menu, developed by chef de cuisine Phillipe Keller, is all about balance and restraint. Each course caresses with a feather, teasing the senses with a whiff of fragrance, a hint of flavour, a moment of unexpected resilience. Truffles complement rather than dominate the dish.

The most aromatic is an amuse bouche, a scallop salad with truffles and herb-laced potatoes. The dish’s sultry smell inflames the senses the moment it leaves the kitchen. Each pearl-white scallop is graced with a slice of black truffle, its white spidery veins radiating through the charcoal orb. A brunoise of chopped raw black truffles is sprinkled around the plate and is redolent with the fungi’s gas, which contains a substance similar to pheromones, which trigger arousal in humans. The earthiness of the mushrooms and the potatoes, which are crushed and lightly dressed with lemon juice, olive oil and parsley, make a fine counterpoint for the broiled scallops.

Perhaps, though, the amuse bouche is too similar to the appetiser - a sliced potato salad with black truffles, graced with mesclun and white truffles, and sweetbreads coated with hazelnuts and lightly fried. This dish has more textures and flavours, especially with its earthy, garlicky Alba truffles, but its nose isn’t as robust.

Keller follows with a delicate ox-tail consomm? adorned with a trio of paper-thin ravioli stuffed with foie gras and wood mushrooms. Truffle slivers season the broth, their essence released by the hot liquid. The tastes are sublime.

Baked sea bass arrives concealing spheres of Jerusalem artichoke that have been caramelised in a cream and truffle juice. Accompanying the fish is a naturally sweet butternut mousseline and an emulsion of asparagus and broth. There is just a hint of truffle here, letting the flavours of the root vegetables come to the fore.

A perfectly prepared Black Angus tenderloin follows, heightened with black truffles and beef jus. A tenderloin’s taste is normally muted due to its lean nature, but here it’s elevated with a burst of flavour as the truffles and jus coat the palate. A pair of creamy celeriac quenelles, redolent with the essence of celery and parsley, and a crispy latticework of potato and artichoke accompanies the dish.

The meal ends with a truffle oil souffl? and it’s perfect, a lighter-than-air puff of egg and sugar with a chestnut-coloured dome that is graced with a drizzle of truffle sauce. The sauce is remarkably pungent. A black chocolate sherbet proves the ideal balance.

Keller stops by to chat. “When you cook with truffles, you want to taste all the ingredients, not just the truffles,” he says. “You want harmony… balance.”

Keller extols the flavour and aroma of truffles, but makes no reference to its sensuality. Yet that is what has attracted devotees since the days of the Egyptians, who ate the tuber dipped in goose fat. The Greeks and Romans prized truffles for their restorative qualities.

But during the Middle Ages, truffles were deemed “witches fare”, a creation of the devil, because of their aroma. It wasn’t until the Renaissance, during the reign of Louis XIV, that the fungi enjoyed resurgent popularity.

Truffles are categorised by colour - black or white - and season - winter or summer - as well as origin. The best are said to come from France and Italy during the winter, although truffles grow in abundance in China, North Africa and the Middle East.

Indeed, the terfez or desert truffle, found in the hot sand from Morocco to Iraq, is the most widely collected truffle today, and is said to have aphrodisiac qualities due to its intense aroma.

Fresh and preserved truffles can be ordered online at www.gourmetfoodstore.com, www.gourmetsleuth.com, www.trufflemarket.com and www.truffe-perigord-noir.com.

Hal Lipper

The Nation

For a copy of Keller’s recipe for scallops with truffles and crushed potatoes, e-mail hlipper@nationgroup.com.

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