The truffle is called "the daughter of lightning." it looks romantic, but it's based on real science. When truffles begin to mature, burning occurs around the plant with truffles, with all the grass in the surroundings dying, as if lightning struck them. At the time, this strange natural phenomenon had made the medieval century of truffles an incarnation of superstitious beliefs, with the fear of millennia, when the pope of france began to eat black truffles. The 19th century was an extraordinary period of black truffles, when at least one black truffle-based dish was required at all official dinners。
Since large and symmetric truffles tend to sell at higher prices on the market, it is perceived to be increasingly like buying diamonds. As in the diamond industry, truffle hunters and distributors try to conceal deficiencies in order to increase their profits. Some hunters fill the cracks of truffles with increased soil weight. It is either the use of mothed truffles, or the use of broken truffles, which are remixed through dirt. If you don't know these tricks, you'll have to look at the truffle in your hand。
The origin of the overly superstitious seller's list is also unreasonable, as sellers generally say their white truffles come from alba, italy, and black truffles come from perigor, france. And actually, god knows where they were found, because it's pretty much the same。
The fundamental problem is that truffles are long overdue. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, france produced about 1,000 tons of black truffles per year, but today only about 30 to 40 tons. Climate change has had a serious impact on truffle production. How can fungi flourish because of reduced rainfall and the drying of trees and soils? Higher temperatures also increase water evaporation and reduce significantly the amount of water that can reach the roots. Can you expect mountain-eating farmers to trim and pour out loose oak trees on a regular basis? However, efforts are under way to change the situation, but it will take at least 10 to 15 years for the oak forests to start producing sufficient quantities of fungi。
That's what happened. Where did the truffles come from? Indeed, the fall in production has forced france and italy, and even suppliers, to import truffles from outside europe, mainly from china. In addition to sichuan and yunnan in china, truffles are growing in australia and the sierra west maraya mountains, some of which are not of poor quality. In the illegal season of the country, french chef joël robuchon also uses truffles produced in macao by three-star french restaurants. But china truffles sell the most because they are cheap. Approximately 30 or 40 tons of truffles are sold each year from china to france. In china, truffles cost between $70 and $80, while black truffles originating in france, like balestra's sabatino tartufi, are likely to sell 5-10 times。
However, even experts cannot distinguish between these two types of truffles. “i really can't tell the difference between black truffles and perigor black truffles in china”, the french expert who studied truffles for years explained, “to distinguish them, we have to use electronic microscopes. China truffles may not be as strong as french truffles, but it is really hard to distinguish.”
Some european cooks insist that china’s black truffle tastes and smells far less than its european counterparts, but this is not because of the quality of china’s truffle. The real culprit is time. Truffles are very perishable and delivery channels are very slow, which means that tubers are usually in poor condition。
Nevertheless, it is impossible to judge that chinese truffles are occasionally sold in european truffles. Normally, the problem will not be discovered until the chef uses it. When the cook starts cutting, he finds one of them fragrances, and the other one doesn't。
Low penalties and poor regulatory review have allowed for the expansion of truffle trade. Unless there is a serious threat to public health and safety, offenders are often released because of loopholes in the law. The chances of these transactions being discovered are low and very high. As a result, smuggling of chinese truffles to europe has become widespread and has even attracted the attention of interpol。
Interpol and europol, the european union police service (eupol), have established the opson organization for the reporting of food-related crimes. Luxury food products and alcohol are the most easy objects to fake. In addition to 30 tons of fake ketchup and 77,000 kg of fake top-grade palm cheese, interpol has seized large quantities of counterfeit caviar and truffles. It's not unusual for fake champagne, fake whiskey, fake top chocolate. Interpol suspects that millions of euros of illegal food trade are used to finance human trafficking and drug production。
The chinese legend of truffles
The chef at the senior medium-level restaurant had said that eating fresh italian french truffles in the country was not a matter of value and operation. For the same reason, the truffles originating in europe, though fragrance and long-distance transport, and the difficulty of keeping them, have become more adult in the hands of chinese cooks. Plus the price is three or four times the price of the national product, it is only when there is a great deal of love for european truffles, and the purse is too big for cooks. In beijing, shanghai and guangzhou, there are large numbers of local cooks in local black truffles。
They also recognize, however, that domestic truffles are less fragrance than europe’s, and that the solution to the problem is simple, i. E., to soak or boil domestic truffles with fragrance and preservation. Of course, we can keep talking about whether or not there's a truffle in the truffle oil. After all, the smell of artificial truffles is not so hard。
China's black truffle grows in the southern provinces of yunnan, sichuan, and truffles grow naturally in millions of hectares of wild oak trees and oak forests. Because of the scarcity of trees and the abundance of rainfall, truffles can be easily found. In addition to the fact that the locals consider it to be pigs' food, the mother, who is often in heat in the mountains, takes it out of the soil when she matures, so in yunnan it is known as the “piggy arches”. The locals have been snuffing them for years and are considered to be inferior. Until someone good finds this huge treasure. The mountain people, who were supposed to be rich in pine and oxen, immediately turned into black truffles。
At first, they just had to flip their hoes so they could find a lot of truffles with little effort, so prices were not high. However, the scavenging damaged mycelium and production was declining, and it was not until recently that the montagnards began to learn how to find truffles with dogs or simply their noses. Yunnan's suppliers stated that the quality of truffles was now becoming increasingly demanding and that it was rare to call good goods in the industry more than 3 cm in diameter. The product needs to be refrigerated and exported as quickly as possible; good truffles have the same market as dry films or spices, since they are now at a modest price and do not need more processing。
It appears that it will not be long before yunnan truffles become available. As a result, the yunnan university of agriculture has set up a project to study the artificial cultivation of black truffles, with a phased victory. In fact, it's not very high-tech to plant black truffles, as the french used to do before, to infect the roots of oak trees with well-bred bacteria, but the right oaks are rare, so it turns into afforestation. Businessmen are said to have invested in planting large tracts of forests suitable for truffles, and in 10 years there will be large tracts of truffles, and he will wake up in a dream with a large collection of banknotes。
How was the summer truffle
In general, the high truffle season is autumn and winter. The most valuable truffles are produced during the winter season, and the highest fragrance and taste indices are found in the deeper ground. However, because of short production seasons and difficult excavations, production is scarce and consequently high prices. In the italian truffle market, good winter black truffles are worth at least rmb 10,000 per kilogram for the season from december to march, and only in the period from september to november, at least 20,000 per kilogram for gold。
Spring and summer also produce truffles. With the summer black truffles, they are beneath the shallow ground, and they are the top of all the truffles, even though the aroma and delicious indices are not high in winter. Both have a high supply and low price volatility due to long production seasons. In the italian truffle market, the price of good summer black truffles is more than 400 per kilogram; and the good quality of the summer white truffle is expensive. In restaurants in france, the tasteless summer truffles are deliberately renamed "st. John's truffe" by st. John's truffe de st-jean (since st. John's day is june) in the name of a saint。
Really? And the desert truffle
There is a desert truffle, the first to be discovered and eaten, with milk white, which, as its name suggests, is mainly growing in the desert. The arid and semi-arid areas of the kalahari desert were found in the mediterranean basin, iraq and kuwait, the sahara and saudi arabia, qatar, libya, hungary, croatia and china, which are said to have been caused by thunderstorms, as they are not the most common fungus. Production is high and very cheap, but it does not smell too much, and it has been used since gudo to produce catalytic and prophylactic drugs。
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