KEY POINTS:
The smell is damp sneakers and shower curtains. The taste is extraordinary: nutty, earthy warmth with a tantalising, unnameable aroma of something else (pork crackling or roasted chestnuts or a hot oven on baking day, perhaps).
The elusive, expensive truffle is heaven for chefs who, like desperate junkies, have to wheedle and beg and pay through the nose to get a fix.
It took six months of research, endless phone calls and lots of smooth-talking but Langham Hotel executive chef Ofir Yudilevich managed to persuade a Bay of Plenty truffle farmer, who regards his fungi with a concern usually reserved for nubile daughters, to sell him the first four truffles of the 2007 season. They didn't even talk money - the price is set at $3500 a kilo, which meant Yudilevich handed over $588 for a total of 168 grams.
Several of New Zealand's nine truffle producers already have chefs waiting in line for their crop and are not interested in finding new customers. Yudilevich said yesterday: "When I first rang, [the farmer] said: 'Who are you? Have you worked with truffles before and what do you want to do with them?"'
Yudilevich will be making tournedos rossini - a classic French dish of prime beef, pate de foie gras and truffle shavings - scrambled eggs and risotto. "I'm storing the truffles in the refrigerator next to the [raw] eggs and rice so they absorb the flavour and I'll be eating the eggs for breakfast."
