Truffles

‘Les truffiers, ils sont tous voleurs.’ Alain Chapel

If you visit France, try to go early one morning to a truffle market. The truffiers guard their small bags of black gold with furtive attention, visiting the café on the square after they have made a sale to brace themselves against the cold by downing eau de vie and thick black coffee. Alain Chapel once warned me that ‘truffiers are all thieves’, and it is true that they have tricks for the unwary buyer. They press lead shot into the truffles to increase the weight, they show perfect truffles as samples and then replace them with wormy ones.