“Fungi are changing the way life happens, as they have done for more than a billion years,” says Merlin Sheldrake in the introduction of “Entangled Life,” his 2020 love letter to the science and fascination of fungi. The omnipresent fungus, which ranges from your basement mildew to coveted Italian truffles and 144,000 other species, live and thrive everywhere: in the air, the ocean, the forests and below the soil.
Fans of “The Last Of Us” be wary — Sheldrake’s award-winning book isn’t just philosophizing an educated opinion, but detailing the scientific history of how fungi has a “world wide web” with its roots in everything. Including you.
Tenured truffle hunter Ava Chapman not only recommends the book but subscribes to this reality, and can attest that the fungi do “own” you, especially when committed to the culinary-focused quest for the native Oregon white truffle.
“The aroma owns you, it’s intoxicating and it pulls you in,” Chapman says on a rainy March morning in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, while actively cleaning a haul of underground-dwelling fungus with a children’s toothbrush. “Not everyone is wild about the scent of truffles, but that owns you too. You don’t have a choice, it stays with you.”
Tuber oregonense — better known as the Oregon white truffle — has only been on the official scientific radar since 2010. Like its better-known, imported brethren from Italy or France, Oregon whites grow underground near the roots of “host trees,” ideally newer-growth (10-25-year-old) plantings of Douglas Firs, in which Oregon is rich. The circular nuggets are the fruiting body of the rare subterranean fungus, and can retail for anywhere between $300 and $4,000 a pound.
Despite the pop-culture-instilled thought of employing pigs for truffle hunting, Chapman has been working with her dogs for the last 10 years as the superior “truffle smeller,” targeting ripe culinary truffles and leaving those unripe in the soil. Other methods include raking, in which the soil is torn up and truffles are uncovered, but the technique also potentially damages both burgeoning truffle patch and host tree root.
“Mammals are the best for truffle hunting because they dig up truffles, eat them, and excrete them, which is how the spores spread and more truffles grow,” Chapman explains. “Even if they crumble into the mycelium [the root-like material of and surrounding the fungus], they’re seeding for the next season. They are always giving.”
FOLLOW THAT DOG
We joined Chapman and her champion yellow labrador, Joey, for an expedition with First Nature Tours last week, one of their final jaunts of the season. While fully expecting to be blindfolded and taken to a secret site to forage and maybe snuggle with a puppy, we were picked up from the Allison Inn in Newberg, Oregon, in a luxury van and shuttled to a wooded area next to a rural home on a hillside.
“Truffle hunting must be fun for the dog,” Chapman says, as we trudged out of the sprinkling rain and under the cover of towering Douglas firs, following Joey as she began to sniff and scour the ground. “I’ve trained her to sniff out only culinary truffles, you have to keep your eye on her because once she starts digging, you jump in, otherwise she’ll eat them.”
Keeping that fun alive, Chapman says you cannot punish or pull the working dog once they have identified and begun to dig, but calmly put a hand down in front of her snout and praise her for her work well done. Then we were put to work — digging with both hands and gardening trowel to unearth the white gold, which can be just beneath the top layer of soil or even half a foot or more into the ground.
“You’re never guaranteed white truffles, regardless of the season or time of year,” Chapman says. “But I have never been in a wood where Joey hasn’t found a truffle.”
First Nature’s guided tour with Chapman has a run time of about an hour “in the field,” equipped with disposable gloves, digging tools, and hot tea to hunt alongside her and Joey from one side of the wood and back. Foraged fungi are kept in an air-tight container that bellows aromas of diesel and truffle upon reopening each time to place new findings, promising both scent and flavor that was sure to “own” our palates at our scheduled lunch at nearby Alloro Vineyards.
CULINARY CREATIONS
“When I say ‘they own you,’ I mean it — when I get done hunting and I’ve found a lot of truffles, it doesn’t matter how tired I am, I have to see it through,” the mushroom enthusiast details as we prepared the truffles for culinary infusion by toothbrushing off excess dirt and passing to her to quickly rinse then wipe with water. From there, she “culls” each truffle with a sharp paring knife, looking for “wounds” that might negatively impact flavor, and ultimately ending up about an ounce of amber-hued fungi that she ensured were ripe and brimming with culinary prowess.
Chapman’s go-to method of “infusion” was not what our group of amateur foragers had pictured — the truffles never touch the food they’re infusing, they simply co-mingle. In the trunk of our tour van, she placed a layer of paper towels in the bottom of a tupperware container, with a stick of salted butter (Chapman recommends Trader Joe’s since it is in a paper wrapper which allows for more air exposure than foil) in the middle and the cleaned truffles spaced evenly around it.
From there, it goes into the fridge for at least a week, with the truffles requiring daily checks of rotating the fungus fruits, changing the paper towels out every few days, and handling everything with care until the butter has been infused to the desired flavor level. One that owns you.
“With every moment that they’re not on some sort of food, they’re wasted,” Chapman states emphatically. “The whole reason I go out to find them is to get them infused into food. Then, literally every day, you need to tend to them, smell them, make sure they’re not going bad and smelling like barnyard. Every day, they own you!”
First Nature’s tour closed with a luncheon featuring the fruits of our labors at the Tuscan-inspired Alloro Vineyards in the Chehalem Mountains. Executive Chef Delani Whaley refreshed our palates with a radicchio and arugula salad before bringing us back to the fungi that continued to own our taste buds in a delightful mezzaluna en parmesan brodo — a mushroom-stuffed, half moon-shaped pasta, resting in a salty broth — topped with our just-foraged white truffles and paired with Alloro’s 2023 Estate Pinot Noir.
While the touring company has two hunting expeditions left of the season — March 21 and 28 – the Willamette Valley is ripe with opportunities to experience truffles. From the Oregon Truffle Festival that celebrated 20 years and occurs each February, to black truffles shaved atop a Source Farms double cheeseburger at Humble Spirit in McMinnville and house-made Oregon white truffle oil from the Joel Palmer House in Dayton, the fungus is omnipresent. A delicacy due to scarcity, specific labor model required to harvest, and short shelf life, truffles are a luxury culinary product unlike any other. And they will own you.
WILLAMETTE VALLEY
First Nature Tours
https://firstnaturetours.com/booknow/
SEATTLE
Join Thompson Seattle’s Executive Chef, Chris Ingmire, and the highly skilled team at Truffle Dog Company, for an exclusive wild truffle hunting excursion and one-of-a-kind culinary experience. March 29th and April 26th.
For more info click here.
