Truffles

Chocolate. Lots of chocolate. That's the perfect way to ring in the new year. So after the ball drops on New Year's Eve, you can bet I will be celebrating with chocolate truffles - dark-chocolate truffles, raspberry-swirled white-chocolate truffles and hazelnut-and-milk-chocolate truffles. The only choice is whether to blow the entire evening's budget on a tiny boutique box of truffles or to make truffles by the dozen that will cost a few cents each and can be made in about the time that it takes to get in the car and drive to the candy shop.

The cicadas are here. While some folks are reaching for protective netting and headgear, tennis rackets and fly swatters, others are readying the saute pan and skillet. "Cicadas are the truffles of the insect world," says Gaye Williams, an entomologist with the Maryland Department of Agriculture in Annapolis. "They're just like any other food commodity, but they're scarce." Indeed, if you miss tasting them this year, you'll have to wait for 2021 for another chance. "If people really want a food experience, this is the year to do it because of the huge numbers of cicadas," Williams said.

As most presidents do, Iraq's Saddam Hussein had an official photographer who documented his life, in this case his personal life as well as his public life. The recent retrieval of Hussein's home videos and photos, however, makes clear that he was not just any president. In one photo, Hussein tenderly kisses an unhappy grandson named Ali. Ali's mother is Hussein's daughter Raghad. Ali's father, Hussein Kamal, was executed by the tender grandfather, Saddam Hussein. Another photo finds Hussein searching for truffles in the desert.

This past week I decided that decadent Chocolate Praline Truffles would be the newest entry to my repertoire. I am crazy about praline, which is a crunchy combination of nuts and caramelized sugar. Praline (the name also refers to the round, patty-shaped candy made with pecans from Louisiana) is neither difficult nor time-consuming to make. Nuts and sugar are heated together in a saucepan until the sugar dissolves and turns brown or caramelizes. Then the mixture is spread out on an oiled surface to cool and harden.

It's intoxicating, stimulating and some would say it sends the heart racing. The feel-good drug of the new millennium turns out to be one of the oldest delicacies around. It's chocolate. In the recently released movie "Chocolat," an eccentric shopkeeper, Vianne, portrayed by France's ethereally beautiful Juliette Binoche, battles the austere teachings of the church with an arsenal nothing short of the divine: white-rum truffles, manon blanc, apricot marzipan and concoctions designed for an all-out assault on the senses.

Pssst! You over there with the deli tray full of cold cuts -- and you with the bags of chips and ready-made dips in your shopping cart. Planning to party like it's 1999 at home?You're not alone, what with baby-sitter woes, work commitments and Y2K fears for this New Year's Eve. But hundreds of other Marylanders have decided to don their best duds anyway and head out to area restaurants to indulge in fancy feasts.We decided to see what diners will be enjoying for this year's end celebration.

Truffles are wild. It's not just the musky, elusive, intriguing fragrance these members of the fungus family exude. It's not their rareness -- they can cost as much as $500 to $2,000 a pound. And it's not even their reputation as exotic and unobtainable.No, the point is, they grow absolutely wild. No one has ever figured out a reliable way to cultivate them. They can only be discovered, not planted. And discovered not even by people, whose olfactory system, with a paltry 5 million scent receptors, can't detect the subtle aroma emanating from underground, near the roots of oak trees.

After Champagne Tony's turned into Truffles at the Belvedere last month and Morou Ouattara became executive chef, I got mixed reviews from those who had eaten there. I gave the kitchen what I hoped would be enough time to get its act together, then went with lowered expectations -- not encouraged by the fact that when we arrived the gorgeous dining room was empty except for the staff.Picture the high-ceilinged room with its beautiful murals, marble fireplace, comfortable chairs, elegantly set tables, crystal chandelier and mahogany-dark paneling.

THE OTHER DAY, while paging through Roberta Donna's new cookbook "Cooking In Piedmont" (Food Concepts Marketing Corp., Cleveland, Ohio, 1996, $29.95) my wife announced that she was not going to "poach any pig ears."I was mildly disappointed because the recipe in the book for pig ear salad, a mixture of the ears, onions, gherkins and Italian parsley, sounded pretty tempting.Finding the main ingredient in a grocery store would be tricky, my wife pointed out. I volunteered to search the butcher shops of Baltimore's neighborhood markets looking for the main ingredient.

The Swiss are justly famous for their sweets. Though they didn't exactly invent chocolate (many will argue that they perfected it), they certainly use chocolate as well as native ingredients to their best advantage in desserts.And what could be better for Valentine's Day than a terrificSwiss dessert.The first, a truffle cake, comes from the venerable Sprungli pastry shop in Zurich. In business since the middle of the last century, Sprungli is probably among the best half-dozen pastry shops in the world.