The fact that the word truffle is derived from the Latin for ‘swelling’ or ‘lump’ hasn’t put off the gastronomes. This rare tuber is more sought after than ever – and now also by us! For some time now we’ve been hatching a plan to add white truffle olive oil to our range -so we’ve been out snuffling with the best of them. Most of our oils are made by pressing the fresh fruit or herb together with the olives and we were keen to apply the same technique here.
So we bought 2,000 euros worth of white truffles and pressed them, fingers crossed, with our ripe, plump olives. Other truffle oil makers scoffed and told us this would never work; they said all truffle oil is made by adding a synthetic dioether called 2, 4-dithiapentane. Well it doesn’t sound nice and it’s derived from petrochemicals, so we ignored them and ploughed on with our fresh, natural truffles. If there was any justice in the world, this story would have a happy ending, with us producing the most wonderful natural truffle oil and forcing those truffleheads to eat their hats. Sadly it doesn’t. The truffles imparted no flavour to the oil when we pressed them together. We waited, hoping that time would give the truffle flavour more oomph. But no oomph came.
We are going to try one more time, this time with a warm infusion. So all is not quite lost yet. But if that last attempt doesn’t work, we’re afraid Nudo truffle oil might go the way of the dodo.
