The beautifully photographed, full-color Field Guide to North American Truffles: Hunting, Identifying, and Enjoying the World’s Most Prized Fungi, by Matt Trappe (Forest Science), Frank Evans, and James Trappe (Forest Science), was published to acclaim from scientists and chefs alike in 2007 (Ten Speed Press, Berkeley).
"The second most expensive food in the world after saffron, truffles are treasured, coveted, and savored for their mysterious and exotic flavor," notes the publisher. "This complete field guide shows chefs and fungi aficionados how to forage for and identify the wide variety of truffles that grow in temperate forests throughout North America. Written by expert mycologists who have studied, classified, and enjoyed truffles for decades, the Field Guide to North American Truffles makes these celebrated underground jewels accessible to all."
The pocket-sized book is the first full-color illustrated guide to identifying North American truffles by their key features. It features profiles and photographs of more than 80 species, including rare and hard-to-find truffle species, as well as flavor profiles, "delectability index," and culinary tips for each species.
Trees, Truffles, and Beasts: How Forests Function, by Chris Maser, Andrew W. Claridge, and James M. Trappe (Forest Science), was published in January 2008 by Rutgers University Press (New Brunswick, NJ). "It’s about bringing together what the three of us have been working in this area," Jim Trappe says. "Between us, we have more than 100 years of research working in this area, and we summarize that, as best we can, in this book. It should pull our collective knowledge together with special reference to comparing South-East Australia, where I also spent time researching truffles and ecosystems, to the Pacific Northwest." These places are half the world apart, and the Australian eucalypt forest systems have evolved independently of the coniferous forests of the Pacific Northwest. But they and their various components—trees, fungi, animals—function much the same. Notes Trappe, "It's like a Shakespeare play: performed in Seattle or Sydney, the actors are different but the play is the same."
