HAFR AL-BATIN, 20 February 2006 — Saudi police keep a close eye on the Kingdom’s border with Iraq. Most of the year they’re simply on the lookout for bad guys, but now they have to handle Bedouins intent on harvesting the borderline’s truffle treasure trove.
“It’s forbidden to come close to the border,” a Saudi policeman on border patrol tells a group of Bedouins who try to cross a sand barrier near the border. “Keep away.”
Truffle hunters in the northeastern region go as far as the Saudi-Iraqi border to collect the precious delicacies, which can be found in large quantities near Hafr Al-Batin.
“There are truffles aplenty in these restricted areas,” Abu Badr, a Bedouin for whom truffles are big business, told Arab News.
“We start searching for truffles in the early hours of the morning and collect them until late in the day. Then we head toward Hafr Al-Batin to sell our yield there.”
Hafr Al-Batin is home to the biggest truffle market in the Kingdom with prices reaching up to SR200 per kilogram.
Truffles are a sought-after food source in the Arabian Peninsula, and they are consumed by many Saudis at this time of the year. They grow on the ground, usually near a specific plant with the local names of jerraid or regroog, and their fruiting bodies grow underground. They are round, warty, and irregular in shape and vary from the size of a walnut to that of a man’s fist.
The fungus is scraped or grated onto food and into sauces and soups just before eating. Experts recommend that veal, chicken, fish, omelets, pasta, and rice can be glorified with thinly-sliced truffles. Cream and cheese sauces avidly take up their flavor.
“There are huge quantities of truffles in the market,” trader Saleh Al-Rasheedy told Arab News. “Hafr Al-Batin has been blessed with heavy rains this year. We also sell them to traders in other truffle markets such as those in Riyadh, Qassim and Jeddah.”
Asked about the location of truffle territory, Al-Rasheedy said the areas along the Saudi borders with Iraq and Kuwait to the north and east of Hafr Al-Batin are the truffle treasure troves.
“Alwasmy Truffles,” a popular Saudi dish when cooked with lamb, are grown in abundance in the northern frontier areas, Al-Jouf, Al-Qassim, Al-Kharj and the Najd region in general.
