Truffles, a mushroom that grows underground in the roots of certain types of tree roots, have been sought and savored since ancient times. Today, truffles are a firm favorite of foodies and demand continues to grow.

Mashed potatoes, scrambled eggs, pasta, polenta and risotto typically serve as classic backdrops for the intense flavor of truffles. Chefs at high-end restaurants often mince truffles into meat sauces or use them to garnish mouth-watering seafood dishes.

Truffles have been a cultivated crop since the late 1800s. Today, most cultivated varieties are grown on farms in Spain, Italy and France. But restaurants and food/mushroom brokers are constantly looking for suppliers of the scarce gourmet commodity, which is why some U.S. growers are poised to take a bite out of the burgeoning market.

“Historically, the demand has always been higher than the supply and is expected to remain so for the next 50 years,” noted Franklin Garland of Garland Truffles in North Carolina on his Web site, www.garlandtruffles.com.

Garland, known as the “Johnny Appleseed of truffles,” is the pioneer of truffle cultivation in the Western Hemisphere. He was the first person to successfully cultivate the French black winter truffle, Tuber melanosporum, in North America.

A North Carolina Department of Agriculture-certified nursery, Garland Truffles has been in business since 1979 and starts about 20,000 truffle-bearing trees each year, selling most of them to new growers. Trees are densely planted in orchards – about 500 trees per acre.

Many trees produce the fungus in as few as five years, provided the proper soil conditions and climate are met. Yields typically run up to 125 pounds per acre under ideal conditions. Growers deploy specially trained sniffing dogs to pinpoint the location of mature truffles ready for harvesting, which is all done by hand.

On the wholesale market, truffles run between $300 to $800 per pound, making them a prized and pricey culinary option for discriminating chefs and foodies.

Learn more online by watching America’s Heartland (http://bit.ly/6v1fl3), the weekly half-hour television series that explores agriculture in all 50 states.

In a recent segment on the “CBS Early Show,” Bon Appetit’s restaurant editor Andrew Knowlton predicted meatballs would be the biggest trend of 2010. “Not grandma’s meatballs,” said Knowlton, but ethnic versions of the dish, such as French and Vietnamese, will be popular. Knowlton also said the food theme of the year will be “New Austrian,” such as homemade pretzels and microbrew beers (the magazine accurately predicted last year’s food trend would be Southern foods). The spicy chili sauce Sriracha will be the ingredient of the year, according to Knowlton, who said it will likely be on restaurant tables alongside ketchup and mustard.

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Haggis, traditionally prepared from a sheep’s stomach stuffed with the animal’s heart, liver and lungs, is Scotland’s national dish and has a small but dedicated foodie fan base in the U.S. For years, chefs have sought a suitable substitute for the dish (illegal to import since 1989) and come up short, with most American-made haggis derided as “dog food.”

Fortunately for haggis fans, Andrew Hamilton, whose New Jersey-based Scottish Gourmet USA supplies restaurants like Daniel, Le Bernardin and Marea with game birds and langoustines, recently came up with a recipe that substitutes boiled beef liver for the illicit lungs. Combined with lamb, onions, spices and oatmeal, Hamilton’s beef liver haggis has been dubbed “a faithful and delicious approximation” of the real thing. USDA is reviewing its lamb product imports ban.

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