‘Our taste buds have been corrupted by truffle oil’: Chasing the real deal in Italy

Over the next half hour, the dogs find a dozen black truffles, plus a couple of marble-sized whites. They’re unimpressive, clotted with earth, and they barely smell. The scales show 150g, worth about €20 ($31), Mac tells us.

Luca, meanwhile, is cutting up cheese and tossing it to the dogs. We drink prosecco while Alessandro cooks eggs the colour of raw sunlight in a pan, then shaves a delicate topping of truffle on each one. The flavour is mild, with just a hint of the powerful, earthy taste I’m expecting.

“We’ve all had our taste buds corrupted by truffle oil,” says Mac, “but the truth is there’s not even a gram of truffle in most truffle oils. It’s all chemistry and it’s overpowering, much stronger than the flavour of a real truffle. If we walk into a restaurant that sells truffle dishes and we smell truffle oil, we walk out again.”

Back at the farm, in a room hung with prosciutto and salami, we have toasted bread spread with truffle sauce, olive oil, garlic and salt. It’s more assertive than the truffle shavings on the eggs but still a long way short of the potent taste I’m used to.

In the kitchen, Francesca is making tagliatelle. We’re served a bowl of steaming pasta with truffle sauce and olive oil, the latter made by crushing the olives using grindstones in the nearby village of Campello. That’s followed by a slow-roasted pigeon dish.

Apart from the wine, potatoes, olive oil and the semola used to make the pasta, everything has come from within walking distance of our plates. Dessert is honey flavoured with cinnamon and amaretti biscuits crumbled over sheep’s milk ricotta that’s been whipped with milk to the consistency of cream.

Rain splatters against the windscreen as we leave, ragged mist shrouding the forest when we rise into the hills south of Pettino. It’s been a day of revelation and I’m thinking about the bottle of truffle oil in the home pantry, now unmasked and destined for the bin.

More information on Wild Foods Truffle Hunt here.