It seems that everyone we know is either coming from or going to Italy these days. This has set Jordan and I off into another one of our by now well established three-year cycles: intensely researching and planning a trip to find the long-lost Sorrenti clan of Calabria—out go the old travel guides and in come the new—only to find ourselves putting the trip on hold when we get involved in some new venture. I could plot this on a graph; I swear!

With this comes a renewed interest in everything Italian, which for Jordan and I usually manifests itself in the form of food. This would explain how we found ourselves in MacLean’s buying a darling little 55ml bottle of white truffle oil for $17.00.

I had been searching for an excuse to experiment with the oil since a dinner party at a girlfriend’s house a month ago, where one woman brought an appetizer of sautéed mushrooms and brie on polenta, drizzled with truffle oil. I can’t get that flavour out of my mind.

My Dad would have flipped; he always said that mushrooms tasted like punk wood and refused to eat them. Imagine what he would have thought if he saw the price of truffle flavoured oil, or worse, if he found out that the price of an ounce of whole truffles would set you back over $100.00.

While there are many varieties of truffles, the most famous are the black truffles of France, and the white truffles of Piedmont, Italy. The upstart Oregon truffles, also found here on Gabriola, are slowly moving up the truffle hierarchy, but although a tenth of the price of the European varieties and with their own unique flavour that has been compared favourably to the more expensive truffles, there is still a problem with harvesting control and flavour consistency.

The flavour of truffles is determined by the tree root system it lives on. The truffle is a symbiotic fungus. It does not have all the essential structures to make it self-sufficient, and therefore requires a close partnership with another organism to survive. The truffles of Italy live on the roots of beech, maple, oak, and popular trees, while the truffles of Oregon live on Douglas fir. It doesn’t take a botanist to figure out that there will be some flavour differential.

There are several reasons that truffles remain the most expensive food and are increasingly harder to buy: they only grow in a few places, and those areas are slowly being deforested and affected by pesticides; they are difficult to locate and often require special dogs or pigs to sniff out the ripe ones; their locations are kept under lock and key by those in the know; they have never been successfully cultivated; and in the case of the white truffle, have short growing seasons. (September to November)

You are not likely to walk into a produce section of any grocery store or even high-end speciality shop here in North America and find bins of these rather ugly looking round fungi. There are canned and pastes available and most cooking magazines will offer the websites where you can order whole or pieces of truffle, but these will be very expensive.

Many Italian cookbooks say, if you can’t use fresh—don’t bother. But, they also willing concede that the best and most economical alternative to the real thing is a good quality virgin olive oil that has been infused with white truffles.

The oil comes in tiny bottles for two reasons: one is that it shouldn’t be stored for more than a few months after opening because the flavour begins to diminish, but also because it really only takes a few drops to make a flavour statement.

It is important to get a sense of the oil on your own. Take some time when you first open the bottle to really smell and taste the oil. I immediately thought: caramelized shallots and a good single-malt scotch.

The essence of white truffles is more delicate than that of black and should never be cooked. The oil is intended at a flavouring agent only, and added to a finished dish, or gently heated at the last step. “Drizzle” is the cooking term I think best describes how to get the best use from truffle oil.

Once I began to look through my Italian cookbooks, I found a dozen easy ways to use and enjoy the flavour of truffle oil. Here are just a few: drizzled over wild mushroom pizzas, garlic toast, scrambled eggs, mashed potatoes, pasta dishes, risotto, and soups. Vinaigrette can be made with the oil and balsamic vinegar to toss salad greens or mushrooms or seafood in. It can be used as a dip for fresh Italian bread or grissini (bread sticks.)

Mushrooms soak up the woodsy aroma of the oil, and take on a new identity. Truffle oil can make plain, ordinary, button mushrooms taste like they just came out of a forest. Imagine what it will add to dried wild mushrooms such as porcini or morels.

It can be added to mushroom gravy for steaks and chicken. You can add it to aioli (garlic mayonnaise) for dipping pommes frites (French fries) in. A cream sauce for lobster or scampi would be amazing with a hint of truffle. I found one recipe for mashed sweet potatoes with truffle oil and bourbon. I could go on forever with all the ideas.

I don’t think I will have much trouble using my tiny little bottle. It can be kept in the fridge if really necessary, but like all olive oils, it will go cloudy and solidify, and require bringing it back to room temperature to use. Eventually, the truffle essence will begin to dissipate and you will want to replace the bottle. On one website, a question was asked of the chef: How do I store the oil? And his rather tongue-in-cheek answer was: Why would anyone want to store the oil? He couldn’t imagine anyone not being able to use the oil in a month.

This may well be all the Italy I get out of this planning cycle. Like Shirley Valentine, whose biggest dream was to drink wine in the country where the grapes were grown, I would love to find myself in a trattoria, dining on a dish of tagliolini al tartufo, in a land where the truffles are grown.

I’ll just consider the oil “practice.”