Les Truffes!

What a revelation- in our local open air market- to find a small booth featuring vegetables far removed from normal grocery store fare. Along the two narrow aisles are several baskets bursting with vibrant colour which display any number of unfamiliar looking, hydraponic, organic and sometimes ugly vegetables and/or roots. Many of these shall remain nameless because the plans we'd made for a brief walkabout with the stand operator flew right out of our minds when we found ourselves face to face with a small basket (about a quarter full) of truffles! At first glance all we could see was a black asymmetrical mass made up of what appeared to be earthen covered blobs which while they varied in size did not vary in ugliness. Truly the worst looking "veg"? in the place yet absolutely the most exotic and beyond a doubt the most expensive. After we had agreed that these were in fact the real deal, we were understandably overjoyed as well as totally surprised at our find. Then something strange happened to us and we morphed into truffle 'hiders' as we tried to keep anyone else from noticing this treasure trove in a basket. We actually "stood guard" shielding them from view and protecting those ugly truffles as we tried to calculate how many if any of the miniscule blobs we could afford because there was no question about us ever being able to manage paying for one of the larger ones. We ended up buying two teeny truffles and watched the man wrap them as if they were precious pieces of Murano glass being readied for air transport. On the way home we stopped at our neighbourhood Italian restaurant and turned one of the truffles over to the chef who kindly agreed to add it to our favourite pasta dish. There are no adequate descriptors to let you know how amazing the meal was. On Sunday night we arrived at a friends' home for an anniversary dinner and instead of the de rigeur bottle of wine, box of chocolates or bunch of flowers, we offered our hosts a little earthy truffle. Not as expensive as a bottle of Cristal but so much better and more appreciated.