The elusive truffle is said to be the most expensive evgetable on earth…they go for about 50 dollars per ounce. I understand that they grow on the roots of oak trees, and that you need a dog or pig to sniff them out. Given the rarity and great demand-has anybody tried farming truffles? Are farmed truffles as good as the wild ones?
Finally, I’ve NEVER tasted a truffle-are they worth the expense? Where do you buy them?
Can truffles be farmed: yes, and they are. See (for instance): The truffle cultivation in France : assessment of the situation after 25 years of intensive use of mycorrhizal seedlings and New World Truffieres.
“The Official Foodie Handbook” has an interesting article about how this was kept under wraps for a long time. After repeating the usual truffle mystique, it adds: “what everybody doesn’t know is that the reason peasants know where to look is that, for a long time now, the black truffle has been cultivated”. In 1982, a similar detail was exposed about the more valuable white truffle by two British journalists, Jane Grigson and Paul Levy. “Giusto Giovanetti, Professor of Mycology at Turin University, made the revelation … backed up by Francesco Tagliaferro, whose Turin firm specialises in mycorrhising the roots of young trees - infecting them with truffle spores”.