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Truffle can be spoiled when cooked. It is in cooking that are caused
the greater damage when, on the contrary, there it should be necessary
not to join truffle with different aromas. It is in cooking that the harmony
of tastes has to be realised. The taste of truffle can never be covered,
rather it has to be exalted by various companions. Why cover it with garlic,
parsley, sage and other spices? A dish of "spaghetti" with garlic
and olive-oil would cost less!
Seasoning: oil or butter?
The great question. Should truffle be cooked, with oil or butter? This
is an enigma and a paradigm too.
It is an enigma because there is always something mysterious about truffle
and consequently about cooking it.
It is a paradigm because there is just one way of treating truffle: not
to spoil it with any smell or taste.
Some productive regions of excellent pure olive-oil think that olive-oil
should be used throughout but to emphasize its quality it is necessary
to match it with products that can exalt its quality in an harmonic proportion.
So if on the one hand truffle is well wedded with good-quality butter,
on the other, especially with the white or summer truffle, it is used
a fine olive-oil which harmonise with this mushroom particular aroma.
Oil
The oil that goes with truffle must be very fine, without prevailing tastes
but with light aromas instead. In France people use grape-stone oil, the
most tasteless oil-seed, whereas in Italy there are very fine oils produced
in calcareous areas, the same areas where the black truffle grows.
Butter
The ideal butter is the ancient butter of the Piedmontese Alpine pastures
"malghe" or of the various mountains summer pastures. Nowadays
some French salted butter has aromas which match well with themselves
in exalting truffle.
Cheese
Cheese is an important truffle fellow-traveller but it is never used in
pasta dishes seasoned either with the white truffle or with the black
one.
While a very good-quality of "fontina" cheese is excellent for
the Piadmontese fondue, the Parmesan cheese of Reggio is good for "carpaccio".
Don’t forget a good "ricotta" for stuffing "tortelloni".
Cream is used for softening some pasta dishes or "ravioli" but
it has to be used with parsimony. It is able to reduce the quantity of
butter and to make the dish lighter.
Meat
Talking about meat it is necessary to confirm the idea according to which
the "very precious" aroma of truffle (five millions liras a
kilo) cannot be covered by strong taste meat.
A good balance between tastes it is gained by choosing white and delicate
meat as for example a good "veal" fillet.
Meat-truffle matching, however, is all to be discovered.
Pasta
Italy is the land of alimentary pasta. Spaghetti is the national dish
but even pasta agrees wonderfully with truffle (the black precious truffle,
the summer truffle, the autumnal-winter truffle, and the uncinatum one).
Actually the pasta containing egg, like the famous hand-made "fettuccine"
(ribbon shaped vermicelli), is too absorbing and needs a lot of seasoning:
spaghetti with truffle to "gogo" would be better.
Wines
Nowadays wine for game it is usually consider the best to match truffle.
Truffle has been discovered all over Italian regions and has many varieties
all along the year, each of which is finding out its wine. It is necessary,
however, a new approach between wine and truffle. Each territory will
have to have a wine that goes with its truffle.
Water
At table water has a special importance with truffle: between a dish,
with its wine, and another one is indispensable to sip water of the same
quality; a sip of water will make the palate ready for the dish and the
wine that follow. Particularly with truffle and eggs it cannot be drunk
but water to allow the palate meet, from the dish, the best harmony.
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Truffle is the most mysterious
and sought-after product of nature. Numberless definitions have been given
to it such as, for example, "the table jewel" and that is enough
to demand that good-quality products only be in its company. .
Oil
Butter
Cheese
Meat
Pasta
Wines
Water
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