Walking The Dog

Of all the amazing experiences I had in Italy last month, the absolute best thing I did was take a walk in the woods with my new friend Ciocco. Ciocco is short for Cioccolato, which means chocolate in Italian. He got this name because, well, he is pretty much chocolate colored. Ciocco is a dog; specifically a Lagotto Romagnolo dog, a breed originating in the Romagna sub-region of Italy, which is essentially the part of the country between Florence and Venice. The Lagotto Romagnolos are retrievers and water dogs, often trained to assist hunters in fetching kills. According to the American Kennel Club, they are keen, affectionate and undemanding and also "the only purebred dog in the world recognized as a specialized truffle searcher." And that last piece of information is exactly why I spent about an hour or so of my vacation walking in the woods with Ciocco.

When I started making my list of what to do in Italy on vacation, I knew I wanted to take some kind of side trip that highlighted something to do with Italian cuisine. And by that I meant not just finding some fancy restaurant or eating as much of one type of food as possible (although that surely happened). No. What I meant by that was I wanted to see food made or something like that; maybe go see the process of making parmigiano-reggiano cheese or find out how pasta is mass produced or go watch Chianti grapes growing. I did none of those. Turns out it's possible to go truffle hunting in some of the hill towns between Florence and Pisa. So on my way to climb the leaning tower, I stopped off at San Miniato-Fucecchio train station for a little detour to the hill town of San Miniato.

I booked my truffle hunt through the trufflehunter.net website operated by the Fattoria Collebrunacchi farm which I think was the first website that popped up when I googled something like "truffle hunting Tuscany" or words to that effect. The reviews were mostly fantastic so despite the relatively high price of 75 Euros for the basic off season truffle walk, I took a chance and booked two spots, figuring all those reviews couldn't be wrong. They weren't.

San Miniato-Fucecchio is about a half hour train ride west of Florence and when we got off the train at the station, our taxi driver Antonio, arranged by the farm for us, was there waiting. We were off! The ride up to San Miniato takes about 20 minutes and it's a typical European country drive: roads about one and a half cars wide twisting and turning up a hill too steep to go up in a straight line requiring the horn to be cautiously beeped when taking some turns when you just couldn't see what was on the other side. The views were gorgeous: fields of grape vines and olive trees by the side of the road with other surrounding hills on the edge of the vista.

When we got to the very top of the hill we were dropped off, Antonio beeped his horn loudly and he was gone. We stood there like a couple of dummies for a few minutes before the gate near us opened and out came Francesca, our personal tour guide for the day to welcome us into the property's courtyard and introduce us to Ciocco, the star of the show. We waited a little while for other folks to arrive but after a few minutes we were on our way alone, just the three of us and our truffle hound. This was a very pleasant surprise. I honestly expected a group of ten or so probably American tourists traipsing through the countryside following a dog. A private two person tour was very unexpected and very welcome.

Our route took us back probably a quarter of a mile along the road we had driven up and then left onto a grassy path leading to a stand of trees and a small wooded area. Chiocco took the lead, off his leash now, and followed by Francesca and then the two of us. While we walked, Francesca explained the process of training a truffle hound, which takes a couple of years with a hollow ball containing a truffle to get the dog attuned to the smell of the truffle but also prevents him or her from eating it, which is an essential quality in a truffle hound. Training of course requires treats for good behaviors so Francesca regularly dipped into her pockets for rewards to encourage Ciocco in his quest.

Once we got into the woods, the hunt began in earnest. Ciocco got his nose to the ground and driven on by Francesca's "Dove, Ciocco! Dove!" started exploring the woods on either side of the path. Truffles are subterranean fungus spores that grow near the roots of trees. There are two types of truffles to be found in the hills around San Miniato: the black truffle, which is found in summer, and the prized and most valuable white truffle, which is most commonly found in November and December. We decided to go in early April, a time when truffles are not really in season at all. Francesca lowered our expectations for finding truffles about five minutes into our walk.

Just like my trips to Yellowstone National Park to see bison and the Everglades to see alligators, all I wanted to do in San Miniato was find one truffle. Just one and I'd go home happy. We found out pretty quickly that these things were not going to be as easy to find as a bison or an alligator, and it wasn't just a size thing. The first places Ciocco sniffed produced nothing. There was some intense smelling and some scratching, but nothing to produce any excitement.

Ciocco digging...

…Francesca digging.

But then Ciocco started digging a bit harder on the left side of the path and it seemed like he had something. Francesca watched and yelled "Stop Ciocco!" when it looked like he'd found what he'd been trained to find. She dropped a couple of treats and finished the hunt for him, digging by hand and bringing up from the earth a vaguely spherical dirt colored thing about an inch in diameter. We had found our first truffle.

This was exciting. I mean this is what I came for and exactly what I wanted. We had to smell it; just HAD to. I don't have a great sense of smell so the truffle basically smelled like dirt to me, which is distinctive and recognizable even for someone with my olfactory skills. It made me wonder what the fuss was all about. Don't worry, this sensation passed quickly. I'd find exactly what all the fuss was about just an hour or so later.

So despite the odds, we had found a truffle. Or more accurately, Ciocco had found a truffle. But that wasn't the end of it. About five minutes later, he started digging again, this time on the right of the path just at the top of a fairly steep part of wooded area. Once he got to a certain level, Francesca stepped in again, waved him off (with treats again) and pulled two more black truffles out of the Earth. Now we were really excited. Three truffles when the odds said we'd find none. I think that's pretty good. And as pedestrian as the whole thing sounds, watching Ciocco dig away was pretty thrilling. I felt like I'd seen something uniquely Italian.

A couple of minutes after truffles two and three, Ciocco's job was done for the day. We passed out of the woods, checked out some fresh wolf tracks(!!!) and strolled between some young and old olive trees in some of the most beautiful country I've ever walked in. Before we left the woods, we got to pick some fresh bay leaves and smell the lemony scent; I'd never seen a fresh bay leaf before and I'd never smelled one like this before. Maybe I'll start using those in my cooking like the recipes call for rather than just skipping. Oops.

After walking by a field of grape vines and picking some wild asparagus (seriously, you can't make this stuff up!), we got back onto the paved road and headed back to the farm. With a hard hour or so of truffle hunting and asparagus picking during which time we really did no real work whatsoever, it was time for some lunch.

Our tour got us a truffle hunt and a tasting of some food made with truffles. When I signed up for this tour, my vision of the tasting was some hard salami or some other pig product with a bit of truffle in some wooden shack in the woods somewhere. If I had tried, I couldn't possible have been further from the truth. 

Once we got back to the farm, we were led inside to a room with a large table with a couple of place settings. The room was fairly plain except for the insane quantity of stuffed animal heads on the walls. Despite the potentially creepy effect of the heads, the room was great and completely rustic Tuscan. Just what we needed. OK so the shack in the woods had been swapped for a farmhouse dining room but I still expected a couple of sausage slices with a bit of truffle oil and a much needed real meal by the time we arrived in Pisa later in the day. Wrong again!

The picture above shows the tasting we were treated to. Clockwise from the bottom of the plate: omelet with wild asparagus (maybe picked by us?); salami; prosciutto; toast with white truffle cream; bruschetta with red pepper puree, then artichoke, then asparagus; pecorino cheese to be eaten with the homemade orange, mandarin orange and lemon marmalades in the top right of the photo; grilled polenta with white truffle cream and shaved black truffle; omelet with truffles; and toast with lardo. In the center of the plate was a salad with truffle cream and chopped sopressata; off to the top right was a Tuscan tomato soup. This was perhaps one of the best meals I have ever had; even the lardo, which is just pork fat, was terrific. It's difficult to pick a favorite but I could have eaten a ton of the omelet with truffles which is literally just egg and truffles. It was fantastic.

That was the appetizer plate. The appetizer plate!!! After we stuffed all that down, with some homemade wine which was also unbelievably good, Francesca advised us to just wait until we had the next course. We didn't quite catch what she said but it may have been something to do with dessert. OK, makes sense. I mean this wonderful feast could be followed by a small sweet.

We didn't get dessert next. Instead we got a foil packet of tagliatelle with butter, parmesan and shaved black truffles and if I've eaten food this good in the last few years of my life, I've forgotten it. I've eaten some pretty darned good food in my time but this plate of food was phenomenal. This dish was so simple and so good that I can't even come up with words to describe it. But the unquestioned star of the show was the truffle, which added an earthiness, a depth of flavor and a small crunch that took the plate from a sublime buttered pasta dish to one of the best things I've ever eaten. Ever.

We did get dessert with some amazing dark chocolate ganache but nothing could follow that pasta and seem better. So we got back in Antonio's cab with a full belly and an experience that was worth every penny. Before I met Ciocco and Francesca, I would have been hard pressed to believe an hour's walk in the woods and quick snack prepared with truffles would have been worth the price; it seemed like a self-indulgent side trip. But the two to three hours I spent at and around Fattoria Collebrunacchi were the best hours I spent in Italy. There's not even any point of comparison. This experience was so special; I'll never forget it.

Wild asparagus, anyone?