Black Truffle

Chefs are being too delicate, not to say stingy, in their use of black truffles, maybe it's the price. About 70 per cent of the black truffles, tuber melanosporum, grown at the two Truffles Australis trufferies at Mole Creek near Deloraine are exported.

A truffle is the fruiting body of an underground mushroom; spore dispersal is accomplished through fungivores, animals that eat fungi. Almost all truffles are ectomycorrhizal and are therefore usually found in close association with trees.

There are hundreds of species of truffles, but the fruiting body of some (mostly in the genus Tuber) are highly prized as a food. The 18th-century French gastronome Brillat-Savarin called these truffles "the diamond of the kitchen". Edible truffles are held in high esteem in French, Spanish, northern Italian and Greek cooking, as well as in international haute cuisine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truffle_(fungus)