Memo from Val d'Orcia — VERA KACHOUH

I am not a truffle expert. Not even close. But I am an eating expert. It is my absolute favorite thing to do on earth. My day is structured around meals—eating with the people I love, picking out ingredients, thinking about what’s in season, and on and on.

Two months ago, I moved to Tuscany with my husband and our 3-year-old son. Last week, I had the pleasure of spending time in the Val d’Orcia with a motley crew of foodies and travelers. The best people. We ate. A lot. And anyone who follows Emiko Davies (our host) will know that we ate well.

On Thursday night, we ate white truffles.

These marvelous, elusive specimen cost a cool 4,000 euros a kilo. Meaning, every shaving is like 30 bucks. A confusing amount of money. But that’s not why they’re good.

White truffles, unlike black truffles, can’t be cooked. Their essence vanishes the minute they mingle with heat or other ingredients. Time is not on your side when it comes to white truffles. They are the definition of ephemerality and like all things that fade quickly in life, they evade characterization. (What would you say a truffle smells like other than… a truffle? Dirty socks maybe? Musk? Funk? And yet…)

They have to be dug out of the earth and consumed as quickly as possible, lest their beauty disappear before one whisper of a taste has landed on your tongue.

If you’re lucky enough to get your hands on one, you can eat it raw, very thinly shaved (there is a special tool for this), over scrambled eggs, or perhaps over pici, rolled by many hands in a kitchen filled with candles, screaming children, and overflowing glasses of wine. When the truffle hits the surface of steaming pasta that’s been tossed with gorgonzola and hazelnuts (white truffles are often found under Piemontese hazelnut trees, so they are a natural pairing), the aroma lifts off the surface and… evaporates. The only way I can describe this is as a sort of intoxication. I ate mine in my room, precariously poised on the edge of a cot, while I was putting my son to bed. It was not the elegant postcard you might imagine, but I savored it.

With every waft of steam, the truffle’s character began to disappear. I tried to hold onto it. To close my eyes and remember. Like I do when I kiss my son before bed, or when I touch his impossibly soft cheek.

I hope you get to try a white truffle one day. But I can’t say honestly which was better, the truffle or the setting. Both were beautiful, fleeting, time-bound, and gone too soon.