Coming to a tree near you: within a few years, you could be harvesting truffles like these from your own tree. Photograph: Boris Harvat/Getty
The nearest I've come to eating a truffle is troughing on a box of Ferrero Rocher. And in the wake of the decomposition of a �28,000 giant truffle bought at auction only to rot in the safe of a London restaurant while the chef was on holiday, I fear that's unlikely to change. Unless I can find a way of growing my own.
The good news is that -as with most things in life - the power of the internet and a cash injection mean I could be growing my own truffle in, oh, less than five years.
There are two main options for the prospective British truffle farmer: adopt a truffle tree and let someone else do the hard work, or buy a tree to plant in your own garden.
The first option entails shelling out some cash to a site called Truffle Tree to adopt an oak "in the heart of Gascony". For �149.00, plus an annual maintenance charge of �35.00 a tree, you can choose to reap the truffle harvest (which will be sent to you in the mail), or allow your fungi to be sold and simply rake in the profits.
You could be eating truffles by as soon as the third year of investment, although the site warns: "One tree may produce a bumper crop while its neighbour does little or nothing. It�s this area of uncertainty that makes the whole concept intriguing" (you might want to replace the word intriguing with "highly risky"). If your tree does begin to produce the goods, you won't have to provide a pig to locate them.
Option two is to buy a tree sapling ready-impregnated with truffle spores. The cheapest offer appears to come from Future Foods, which is offering a downy oak or hazel sapling for �15. But what's not clear from the site is whether the trees are currently in stock: I've dropped them an enquiring email and will let you know the response. In the meantime, Seeds of Italy have the widest choice on offer, with a black truffle tree for �38.99, a white one for �48.99, or the pair for �69.
Within around four years, you should be ready to start searching for your first harvest. Assuming you don't have a fully-trained truffle pig on standby, Alan Titchmarsh (who, let's face it, knows everything) explains: "What the hunter does � once they�ve found a likely spot - is lay flat on the ground and watch for little clouds of yellowish truffle flies that hover in clouds and mark the spot when they are in egg-laying mood." TheTruffle Tree site also advises that "a slight disturbance in the soil can usually be seen, and they are quite fragrant".
And if you discover, after years of waiting for your truffle tree to fruit, that you don't actually like the fungi, you can always sell them to your local French or Italian restaurant for an enormous sum. Just make sure they're nice and fresh.
