\n<\/p>\n
Look, I\u2019m not accusing Nicolas Cage or anybody else involved in the movie \u201cPig\u201d of lying. But after a search around Oregon, I haven\u2019t been able to find a single person who hunts the state\u2019s wild truffles with a hog, as Mr. Cage did in the film.<\/p>\n
Pigs will snarf as many truffles as they can, for one thing. They rip up the forest floor like cloven-hoofed bulldozers, which is why it\u2019s been illegal to bring them on truffle hunts in Italy since the 1980s. And when a harvester is on the way to a secret truffle spot, they tend to give the game away.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou put a 300-pound pig in the back of your Subaru and people know where you\u2019re going,\u201d said Deb Walker, a professional dog trainer, as she instructed about two dozen humans who had come to a farm outside Eugene this month to learn the art of working with canines to sniff out fussy, perishable, mysterious wild truffles. Around 2,000 dogs in the Pacific Northwest have graduated from similar courses over the past 20 years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
While many people are content simply to teach their dogs an exotic new trick, others have taken up truffle hunting as a serious hobby. A few hunters have turned it into a profitable side hustle during high season, which runs from October to May. Other harvesters, no one knows quite how many, comb the loamy soil under Douglas firs with long-fingered rakes instead of dogs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Wild-mushroom brokers buy them at trading posts in the woods that can take on the atmosphere of mining camps in a gold rush. Chefs in Portland, Seattle and other cities are visited by people with dirt under their nails offering baskets, buckets and leather satchels loaded with small white truffles and big, knobby black ones at prices that can reach $800 a pound. Oregon truffles have been made into oil, cheese, chocolate, beer<\/a> and vodka<\/a>.<\/p>\n To some connoisseurs, truffles are as evocative of the region as morels and blackberries.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe black truffle, after microplaning, is to me what ambrosia, the nectar of the gods, would taste like,\u201d said Charles Ruff, the culinary director of the Oregon Truffle Festival<\/a>, an annual series of events that celebrate both the state\u2019s indigenous varieties and the European ones that are cultivated.<\/p>\n Yet the growing local passion for these native truffles isn\u2019t widely shared outside the Pacific Northwest. Their beguiling, peculiar aromas almost never waft from dining rooms in other parts of the country.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIn my experience with fine-dining restaurants, there is very little to no demand for them,\u201d said John Magazino, who buys and sells truffles for the Chefs\u2019 Warehouse<\/a>, a specialty-food wholesaler. \u201cIn 30 years of being in the world of truffles, I\u2019ve yet to have a chef ask me for them.\u201d<\/p>\n Urbani Truffles<\/a>, one of the largest truffle suppliers in the world, sold Oregon truffles briefly in the 2010s, but hasn\u2019t since.<\/p>\n Compared with the P\u00e9rigord black truffle, Oregon\u2019s \u201cis not so powerful,\u201d said Vittorio Giordano, the company\u2019s vice president. \u201cThe consumers that are used to truffles, they have an idea of the aroma, and this one is very, very different.\u201d<\/p>\n On the last day of February, accompanied by Charles Lefevre, who has done more than anyone to spread the word about Oregon truffles, I explored a cool, shady Douglas fir grove just outside Eugene. More accurately, Dr. Lefevre\u2019s dogs, Dante and Luca, explored the grove, while he and I scrambled to keep up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIf I take my eyes off him for a second, he\u2019ll eat a truffle,\u201d he said as he followed Dante through a thicket of downed branches.<\/p>\n Black and white truffles, the region\u2019s two most commonly dug varieties, have been found as far south as Point Reyes in California and as far north as Vancouver Island in British Columbia, but Oregon is especially rich in their favorite habitat. Dr. Lefevre described the ideal hunting ground as former grassland where Douglas firs were planted 15 to 30 years ago. He can spot classic truffle terrain from the wheel of his car, but finds satellite images more useful.<\/p>\n \u201cThe modern truffle hunter starts from Google Earth,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n His hunch about this grove of firs had been paying off nicely since January, when he signed a lease to the truffling rights with the farmer who owns the land. \u201cEvery time we\u2019ve come in here we find about $5,000 worth of truffles,\u201d Dr. Lefevre said. He donates most of them to the truffle festival, which he helped found; he makes his living inoculating tree seedlings with European truffle spores and selling them to people who want to start their own orchards.<\/p>\n Dante and Luca are Lagotto Romagnolos, a breed that specializes in finding truffles. (Trainers say that any dog with motivation can hunt truffles.)<\/p>\n Some recent forays had taken a toll on Dante\u2019s hips. He\u2019d been somewhat restored by acupuncture the other day, and the smell of the woods seemed to revive him completely. The minute he would start to snuffle at a spot of fluffy, loamy topsoil, Dr. Lefevre dropped to one knee beside him, trying to snatch the prize and stash it in a pouch he wore on his hip before it could enter Dante\u2019s stomach. This pattern \u2014 the dog digs; the human dives \u2014 was repeated about twice a minute.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n You can eat a truffle like an apple. It is what they were built for. They are the fruiting bodies of invisibly fine mycelial networks of fungi that grow among tree roots and contain spores that have to be carried to new sites in the guts of animals that feed on them.<\/p>\n Truffles are full of protein and carbohydrates. Most humans, though, are far less interested in their nutrient content than in their flavor, most of which is concentrated in an aroma so piercing that it compels mice, squirrels and dogs to root in the dirt.<\/p>\n I buried my face in a handful of whites Dante and Luca had found. My first impression was of ramps or garlic chives, then button mushrooms, but the overwhelming scent was a potent animal reek. They were only distantly reminiscent of the better-known Italian white variety, the most valuable truffles in the world.<\/p>\n The whites were so pungent that at times even I could tell when I was standing over a ripe cluster. The black truffles had a more diffuse aroma. I couldn\u2019t catch it, but Dante could. He would zig and zag across the forest floor, shimmying and wiggling before stopping at a spot that might be 100 feet away.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cA little bit higher energy,\u201d he said, eyeing Dante. \u201cHaving trouble finding it. This is black behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n Holding my nose up to a dark, dirt-caked lump slightly smaller than a tennis ball that Dante had led us to, my first thought was ripe pawpaw, with its soft tropical flavors of pineapple and banana, plus a dusting of cocoa powder and a whiff of juice box.<\/p>\n A P\u00e9rigord black truffle, with its flavors of black olives and dried mushrooms, wants to be baked into a potato gratin or roasted under the skin of a chicken. This truffle wanted to be dessert.<\/p>\n In his first 10 years with the truffle festival, Mr. Ruff said, \u201cI thought it was my job to send our truffles out into the world.\u201d Then, on a trip to Italy, he ate a dish a chef had made with the local white truffles that gave him a profound impression of place. \u201cMy thinking completely flipped upside down,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Since that moment, the festival has focused on helping chefs in the Pacific Northwest understand their truffles as deeply as French and Italian chefs understand theirs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt took me many years to get over the fact that they\u2019re not the exact same thing\u201d as the European truffles, said Elias Cairo, the owner of the salumi company Olympia Provisions<\/a>, in Portland. \u201cThey\u2019re their own flavor profile that represents this really cool pocket of forest in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Cairo sometimes cures salami next to Oregon white truffles so they can soak up the aroma, in which he detects nutmeg, allspice and cloves. A hunter, Mr. Cairo finds that they also emit a musk that reminds him of game.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve ever had a wild boar where it\u2019s a little too stinky?\u201d he asked. \u201cI picture an older male animal that wants to breed, that\u2019s got its pheromones fired up.\u201d He understands that this may not be everybody\u2019s cup of tea.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe white is just so stinky-strong,\u201d said Deb Meyer, a chef who owns Choux Pastries<\/a>, in West Linn. She meant it as a compliment. For an Oregon Truffle Festival dinner this year, Ms. Meyer infused that stinky strength into goat cheese that she sandwiched into airy little macarons.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nPicking Up the Scent<\/span><\/h3>\n
A Lure for Chefs<\/span><\/h3>\n