Our Eggs + Wild Oregon Truffles
It’s been way too long since Team Chicken’s last group egg-feast. So when Sunset researcher (and Team Chicken member) Elizabeth Jardina came back from the Pacific Northwest last week with a bagful of knobbly wild Oregon truffles—both white (Tuber oregonense) and black (Leucangium carthusianum)—we decided it was time.
Team Chicken’s breakfast on Friday: omelets and soft-scrambled eggs from our flock out back, with shavings of white truffle (left, in back) and black truffle.
This may seem extravagant until you consider that Elizabeth spent less than $25 on nearly 2 ounces of these things…which is a fraction of what truffles cost in Italy (T. magnatum) or France (T. melanosporum).
To be honest, Oregon truffles don’t taste like Italian or French truffles. They’re much, much milder. Still good and worth eating, though, especially at these prices. The blacks have an interesting pineapply sweetness I think I’d like to get to know better. The whites have a wonderful ripe earthiness, but it’s just a whisper of what a white truffle from Alba, in northern Italy, can do. A good Alba truffle will suffuse the room, the house (or restaurant), and the inside of your head with its crazy, musky fragrance…in the best possible way.
The best way to concentrate the flavor of these truffles is actually not to eat them over or folded into eggs, although they were just fine that way. Later that day, we discovered that they were most powerful when finely shredded on a Microplane and mixed with butter. We dolloped the truffle butter onto hot linguine and spread it on toast. Slurp, slurp. The rest we’ve saved (in the freezer, where its flavor will, we’re told, keep developing) for our next egg feast.
Good, fair assessment of Oregon truffles. I would argue that Oregon truffles can “suffuse” a room, house, etc.” when properly ripe, too. I would encourage you to try Oregon white truffle oil. Versatile and delicious!
Practically every European I know grew up hunting for mushrooms, and has very fond memories of those experiences. We have a ways to go in this country–except, of course, for the passionate mushroom-hunters of the Pacific Northwest. Those people seem to think nothing about plunging into the woods for chanterelles, morels, and so forth. It’ll be interesting to see whether fungi-hunting gets more popular over the next few years.
sounds like fun! Go Team Mushroom! And, of course, on the old continent some of us LOVE mushroom hunting. As for the variety, you know, I don’t discriminate between mushrooms and their taste. I like them all as long, of course, as they are not poisonous
Respectfully,
Isabella
You know, we’ve been talking about growing our own mushrooms. It’s something that a few of us have always wanted to do…So with any luck, you’ll be seeing the progress of Team Mushroom sometime this year. What kinds of mushrooms did you eat as a little girl? And did you go hunting for them?
I totally agree that the best way to taste rich flavour of the truffle mushroom is to shave thin slices and add butter or cream. In fact, flavour of most mushrooms would unfold under these conditions…
yum, yum… next one block diet may consider growing its own mushrooms, and cook a mushroom omelette from organically grown wonderful eggs? I feel like having chickens in my backyard all over again like I had in Europe with my parents when I was a little girl