Everyone’s Favorite Fungus

The Oregon Truffle Festival Celebrates Everyone’s Favorite Fungus.
Three terrific, truffle-filled weekends coming in January.

By Don Root

They’re strangely neither plants nor animals, but as every chef knows, fungi are indispensable partners in the kitchen. The mushrooms in your spaghetti sauce? Fungi. The yeast in your bread? Fungi. The bleu in your bleu cheese? You guessed it. And in the culinary realm, one fungus stands out, exalted above all others: the truffle. Top European specimens of this flavor-packed delicacy routinely fetch around $4,500 per pound.

In January, truffle fans will celebrate the undisputed Dom Perignon of the fungus world at the 11th annual Oregon Truffle Festival, which offers three weekends of events in and outside of Eugene. It’s a veritable “Truffle Summit,” acknowledging our region’s increasingly lofty place in World Truffledom. Some 40 distinguished chefs from the Pacific Northwest and Brittish Columbia will be participating, and a host of guest truffle experts will be on hand.

Read the entire article here.