What to Do with White Truffles

It's white truffle season again, I bought my first one last week. The season is short; it starts at the end of October or beginning of November and by December they'll be gone again.

White truffles come mainly from the Piedmont region of northern Italy around the town of Alba. They cannot be cultivated (yet, scientists are working on it and have reported some initial success) but grow underground in the woods under oak, beech and a few other trees. Men go out before dawn with specially trained dogs that are able to sniff the valuable truffles. The smell is the thing, intense, earthy, ur-fungal, like nothing else.

This comes at a price - but since this is turning out to be a good truffle year, it's less expensive than last year: the truffle I bought was sufficient for 7 portions and cost €99 so that's €14 per portion. Extravagant? I justify it: it's much much nicer and costs less than going to a restaurant for a pizza or a burger. I don't smoke, if you need to justify expense you can almost always do it.

The first time you buy a white truffle you also have to buy a special slicer to slice it paper-thin. The shops that sell truffles usually sell the slicer as well.



The first evening five of us had angel hair pasta with our truffle:

• first prepare a very simple sauce: heat a cup or two of cream with a teaspoon of olive olive oil and a little salt, add a tablespoon - or more, to taste - of grated parmesan (the real stuff, from a good cheese shop, not the sawdust you can buy in pre-grated packets in the supermarket). Keep warm.
• boil about 40g of thin pasta per person at a very brisk heat until al dente; this will take only a couple of minutes. Shake a little olive oil over the drained pasta to keep it from being too sticky, then pour over the sauce, give it a good stir and serve.
• at the table, slice thin slithers of truffle over the pasta and enjoy.

The next day, two of us had the rest of the truffle shaved over a fried egg. This is the simplest and actually one of the tastiest ways to enoy white truffle. You should use the very best quality eggs you can find, there is no sense in using factory-farmed eggs, they must be free-range.