The famous French gastronome, Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, once referred to Perigord black truffles as "the diamonds of cookery."
But Daniele Mazet-Delpeuch, who grew up at her grandparents' foie-gras farm in the Perigord region of southwest France, describes the subterranean fungi as simply a gift from nature, to be enjoyed among friends and family.
"A truffle is almost impossible to eat in a restaurant," Mazet-Delpeuch noted during a talk last month at La Gare in Santa Rosa. "It's really a gift to enjoy together."
On her way to speak about the tasty truffle at the International Association of Culinary Professionals conference this week in Chicago, Mazet-Delpeuch stopped by Sonoma County to visit with friends and prepare a series of rustic dinners in various restaurants, wineries and private homes.
With her gray hair pulled back into a simple bun, the 65-year-old Frenchwoman is every bit as earthy as the truffle itself. And like the famous fungus, she shines her brightest in the home kitchen, where she enjoys giving cooking lessons and serving rustic, unpretentious fare from her beloved region.
In the 1970s, Mazet-Delpeuch served as a pioneer of culinary tourism in France, launching weekend cooking classes in her home and founding the region's first cooking school. She also opened a restaurant in her home, La Borderie, specializing in Perigordine cuisine.
During the 1980s, chef/instructor Cathy Burgett of the Santa Rosa Junior College's Culinary Arts/Baking and Pastry program spent a year working with the cook at her 700-year-old farmhouse.
"Daniele's food is absolutely authentic, inspired by a region where living close to the earth is part of the heritage," Burgett recalled. "She taught me to cook not just to entertain people, but to take seriously the whole notion of the pleasures of the table."
In 1988, Mazet-Delpeuch was hired as the chef of French President Francois Mitterrand at the Elysee Palace, where she cooked private dinners for the family and a few of their guests, from Mikhail Gorbachev to Margaret Thatcher.
During her stay in Northern California's Wine Country, Mazet-Delpeuch collaborated with Cafe Saint Rose chef/owner Mark Malicki for a dinner at Michel-Schlumberger Winery in Healdsburg and with Sassafras chef/owner Jack Mitchell for a dinner at his Santa Rosa restaurant.
Many of the people attending the dinners had already met Mazet-Delpeuch through a series of culinary tours to the Perigord region led by longtime Santa Rosa chef and caterer Michael Hirschberg.
During a dinner for 16 at a private home in Cotati, Mazet-Delpeuch bustled about the kitchen as she expertly juggled the preparation of several appetizers, a first course of Foie Gras Torchon, a Perigord salad with duck gizzards and walnuts, an entree of duck breasts a l'orange, Potatoes Salardaise (cooked in duck fat), baby turnips and carrots, a cheese course and her signature dessert: Ile Flottante, a soft meringue with a caramel glaze floating in a pool of creme Anglaise.
The appetizers included pissaladiere, a rustic flatbread with anchovies and caramelized onions, which she cut apart with a pair of scissors; and small tarts made from paté brisée topped with leeks and shallots.
But the piece de resistance was a treasured black truffle, which she let sit in a bowl of eggs, then carved up in her hand and gently scrambled with the infused eggs.
Mazet-Delpeuch carefully placed the Brouillade aux Truffes on toasts for her guests, then playfully popped the final spoonful in her own mouth, before raising a glass of champagne for a toast.
The Frenchwoman learned the secrets of the mysterious truffle from her grandparents, who produced up to 40 tons a year. In the Perigord, the black truffles (Tuber melanosporum) are produced on the roots of hazelnut and green oak trees, in soil with a high pH.
"The truffles develop on the finest, tiniest roots, far away from the base of the tree," she said. "The sun has to see the roots, so the tree needs to be pruned."
Mazet-Delpeuch traced the history of the precious foodstuff, from its first mention 2,000 years ago to its more recent cultivation. For most of its existence, the underground fungus has been cloaked in mystery.
"We wait for truffles," she noted. "We plant trees, and if weather and soil is right, we have them."
The golden age of truffles in the Perigord started after the French Revolution, with the rise of the middle class, and lasted until World War I, when many farms were deserted and the country was plunged into poverty.
"In 1820, the production in France was 43 tons of truffles," she said. "In 1850, it was 200 tons.... Production went down in 1950 to about 16 tons."
The spore of the truffle was discovered in 1850, but it took another 125 years for a French scientist to figure out how to cultivate truffles, by inoculating the roots of local saplings with truffle spores.
About 10 to 15 years ago, when the Tuber indicum truffles grown in China began to infiltrate the market, some were passed off as the higher-priced black Perigord type. Chinese truffles cost about $10 an ounce, and Perigords about $140.
"From the outside, they look the same, but they have no flavor and no taste," she said. These days, there are experts at every truffle market who can check on the truffle variety. "And I think that is a good thing."
In the Perigord, truffles begin to grow sometime in August, after a heavy rain soaks the soil. The truffles can be harvested as early as November, but the best come later in winter, starting in January through early March, she said.
Although pigs and trained dogs are often used to locate the underground fungi, Mazet-Delpeuch's grandmother used another method.
When the first rain would soak the ground, she would go out looking for small "volcano" eruptions on the soil, showing where the young truffle was growing.
"My grandmother would put a seed of wheat there," she said. "Then she would go early and look for truffles."
These days, there are truffle farms all across the world and the United States, from North Carolina and Tennessee to Oregon and Northern California.
Whether these experiments will yield the flavor of the diamond of Perigord remains to be seen.
You can reach Staff Writer Diane Peterson at 521-5287 or diane.peterson@pressdemocrat.com.
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