Black Truffles

Around Christmas and all through January there is truffle mania in Languedoc, particularly in the Gard. There are truffle festivals and fairs scattered across the region and chefs dream all night of new recipes involving truffles. Recent delights have included a hot toasted truffle sandwich fried in olive oil and served with a glass of iced champagne, black truffle macaroons, and truffled soup of boudin blanc.

In Moussoulens, north of Carcassonne, the January truffle fair, the Ampélofolies, is a fête day. It is often freezing cold and all around the centre of the village are stalls selling local winter produce (confit of duck, duck breasts and giblets, turkeys and other poultry from the Cabardes, nuts from Narbonne, spicy gingerbread, rosemary or lavender honey, huge mountain cheeses, charcuterie, bread, nougat, chocolate with nuts, rose petal jam, live snails, onions and the rose garlic of Lautrec), as well as hot food to keep out the cold (little meat pies, chips, grilled duck-breasts or Toulouse sausages, tripe, hot chestnuts, millas or polenta, beignets, oysters and omelettes). Stalls overflow with plastic cups of local wine, people picnic and snack everywhere, spilling onto the grass roundabout and verges, even into the bus shelter.