Desert Truffles – from the souq to my kitchen

by Rabeya Merenkov

I had lived in the Arabian Gulf region for 8 years before I’d ever heard of Terfeziaceae, the truffles of the Arabian and North African desert. They came up in a book that quoted Alois Musil, a Czech traveler in the early 20th century:

Together they roasted them over the fire; even the Prince himself had fetched some butter, crumbled it into the baked truffles and eaten them with relish.

Eager to try these truffles myself, I looked everywhere – asking around and keeping an eye out for them in restaurants and grocery stores and markets. But I didn’t strike lucky for another two years, when I moved to Qatar and stumbled upon a local blogger’s account of one of the traditional markets. It featured a photo with a basket full of truffles.

So I set off early one March morning for the market in question: the Omani Souq, so named because it has been a forum for trading goods between Qatar and nearby Oman. But all thoughts of this history vanished within a minute of leaving the taxi. The very first stall I encountered had two trays of sand-stained, bulbous, lumps the size of my fist. They were perched on a cardboard box, incongruous with the surrounding brooms, canes, tools, fans and incense burners for sale.

To be sure they were not just gnarled potatoes, I asked the vendor what they were.
I didn’t understand him at first. Then I figured out his accent and realized he was saying, in English, “Mushroom.”

When I asked him the cost, he gave me a price for the entire tray. I clarified: “How much for one?” and he looked at me strangely. Finally he conceded to sell to me by weight, and I bought half a kilo.

As I wandered the rest of the souq, the vendors varied in their wares. Most were selling garden plants (including full-grown trees), but there were also baskets, pottery, foodstuffs and aromatics. And nearly everyone had a crate or two of truffles out.

But even that didn’t prepare me for the row of stalls at the back that sold only truffles, where the vendors called out “Mushroom, mushroom!” (or in Arabic: “Fagga, fagga!”) as I passed. And I noticed that anyone else who was buying them did indeed buy entire crates or trays. Most didn’t even leave their cars, driving right up to the stalls and exchanging cash for truffles through the driver’s window.

Yet even though I didn’t buy more than my four truffles, the vendors were friendly. Language barriers prevented us talking in depth, but the men conveyed that truffle season is January to March, that this particular crop came from Algeria, and that some locals are very fond of the truffles even though they are generally expensive.

I didn’t realize how expensive until later. Qatari news sources over the past few years report a typical cost of 300-500 QR/kg (USD $40-$70/lb), though there are reports of them selling for up to 3000 QR/kg ($412/lb). So I had been really lucky to pay only 150 QR/kg ($20/lb).

The market value of desert truffles can vary greatly each year because they have to be found in the wild; cultivation attempts have not been successful, and their abundance in nature varies from year to year. There are also different types of desert truffles – white, pink, and black – each commanding a different price. (All the truffles I saw at the souq were white.) I have seen conflicting accounts of which is the most expensive, some sources claiming the black kind and others claiming the white. I wonder if this, too, varies from year to year.

I have read that, while desert truffles freeze well enough, refrigeration does them no favors and they are best eaten a day or two out of the ground. So as soon as I came home that day, I prepared to cook my truffles.

Since truffles are dug up from the desert, the first step in any truffle recipe is to remove any remaining sand. This is a task of several stages, and cleaning my four truffles took well over an hour.

First, the truffles have to be soaked in water and then scrubbed. Even after three rounds of soaking for ten minutes and scrubbing thoroughly, there was still sand left. So the next step is to pare off the outer layer of each truffle with a knife. The largest of my truffles was the trickiest to clean this way because it had deep cracks filled with very fine sand.

Once I sliced past the dirt, the remainder of the truffles had a familiar smooth-spongy mushroom texture. I discarded the pared-off scraps, though it’s worth noting that some recipes call for boiling these to flavor a liquid. But then you have to pour off the liquid carefully to separate it from the sand at the bottom of the cooking pot, which is too fine for any strainer to catch.

Then it was time to decide how to cook the truffle flesh.

Fire-roasting them Bedouin-style was not going to work in my kitchen, but I still wanted to prepare the truffles in a traditional manner. Most of the recipes I found, however, were European-style creamy soups. They are an ingredient in some traditional Arabic stews and rice dishes, but there the truffles are just one ingredient layered among many. However, I wanted a dish where the truffles are the main feature. Several of the souq vendors had told me you can cook them “like potato” – which is intriguing, but then again there are so many ways to cook potatoes!

After more searching, I discovered that it is traditional to boil the truffles in milk – preferably camel’s milk, but to get that in Doha would require another trek to a different souq. So I cooked them in whole (cow’s) milk lightly seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic and onion. Every truffle recipe I’ve seen seems to involve garlic and onions; nevertheless I was scant with them because I wanted to foreground the truffles’ natural flavor.

After a few minutes of simmering, the aroma was wonderfully strong and mouthwatering – which belied the disappointing blandness of the actual truffle flesh. But having seen so many cream of truffle soup recipes, I decided to puree the truffles in the milk with a hand/immersion blender.

And I must say that the result – a silky-smooth soup permeated with the delicate flavor of the truffles – made all the work that went into it worth it.

But to do it again without the novelty factor – especially if the truffles cost double or more – I don’t think it would be worth it. Not unless there were some special occasion.

Then again, truffle season is in the cooler months, which in these parts is the best time of year for camping. So perhaps another year, I can take truffles on a camping trip – or even find some there myself – and try them roasted over a desert fire.

References

Robert Lebling and Donna Pepperdine. Natural Remedies of Arabia. 2006: Stacey Intl.
John Feeney. “Desert Truffles Galore,” Saudi Aramco World. September/October 2002. http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200205/desert.truffles.galore.htm