Truffle hunting: sniffing out a seasonal gourmet treat

They're brown and lumpy with a pungent, earthy aroma and seem to grow randomly underground amongst the roots of certain trees. They are the most expensive fungi in the world, and they're in season. They are tuber melanosporum, or Périgord black truffles.

It's harvesting time and I'm joining Barbara Hill, the owner of Macenmist Truffiere, a truffle farm in Bredbo, 80km south of Canberra in south eastern NSW, and her truffle sniffer Fahren. It is a clear, winter's morning, and the sun is warm as we enter the truffiere, disinfecting our shoes so as not to contaminate the soil. 

A light wind blows across the orchard as Barbara leads Fahren through the rows of bare hazelnut and oak trees. It's not long before the dog picks up a scent, follows it to the base of a tree in the middle of the orchard, and starts digging to show Hill the spot. A small gardening tool is used with gentle force to scrape the dirt away from the surface until a dark lump is unveiled, before a spoon is used to "excavate". After careful scraping and brushing to remove the dirt around the truffle, a bulb is successfully excavated.

Originally from France, this cold climate fungi is ideally suited to the cool climates of Canberra. The freezing temperatures in winter are necessary for their ripening, but the summer heat is also a part of growing truffles.

Truffle growing is a young industry in Australia, and growers are still learning, trying to get to grips with the apparent randomness of truffle growing. The trees in the hectare Macenmist orchard have been inoculated with the truffle fungus – the truffles growing underground amongst the trees' root systems; tree and truffle relying on the other for survival. This fungal delicacy is ripe for the digging in the middle of winter between June and August.

Truffiers use flies, pigs and dogs to sniff our truffles. Macenmist's working dog Fahren is a Logotto, a specialised truffle sniffer. Today from three digs, she finds two truffles before calling it a day and running out of the paddock; her hour and a half labour yielding delicious fruits.

Back at the shed, the truffles are washed to remove the dirt and weighed. The first comes in at 32 grammes; the second a smaller six grammes. The external imperfections are carved away to reveal a perfect black truffle underneath. When sliced open, the white veins throughout look like a brain. At $2.50 per gram, not even a crumb is wasted; the scraps used to make truffle butter.

I purchase three grammes of fresh truffle from our morning's hunting and am told to put it in a jar with a couple of eggs for a few days in the fridge. Its aroma will be infused in the eggs.

Throughout winter Canberra and its surrounds is celebrating its fifth Truffle Festival, with local restaurants serving up the delicacy from the Southern Highlands to the Snowy Mountains. There is even a fresh-brewed truffle ale on offer.

At Cuisine on Lake Crackenback, head chef Greg Pieper has prepared three special courses. A sweet eschallot tart with black truffles for entree, black truffle sweet pork belly with a seared scallop, pear and brown butter for main, and truffle ice cream served with a chocolate nemesis cake. "As a chef I try to source as regionally as I can, it's quite a unique thing to have access to such a modern dining delicacy regionally" he says.

My own cooking might not be quite so refined. But I'm still looking forward to creating my own indulgent breakfast of truffle-infused eggs. But who wouldn't be?