Tagliatelli with Truffle is such a simple dish to make if you have the ingredients. It might seem a bit extravagant using truffles at home but you can pick up jars of black truffles quite cheaply and then enhance the beautiful, perfumey flavour that truffles give by enhancing the actual black truffles with some white truffle infused oil.
White truffle oil itself is again quite expensive (around £5 or more per bottle) but a little goes a very long way. I suppose white truffle is a bit like saffron (which in itself could be a whole blog posting) in a way because where a tiny pinch saffron strands can colour and flavour a dish far greater than you'd imagine, white truffle can do the same with taste and aroma. This will probably go some way to explain why they are so expensive, around this time last year white truffles were selling for around £8,700kg.
Why are these fungus so expensive? Well because they are only found in parts of northern Italy and a few in Croatia. Some truffle farmers use specially trained pigs to sniff them out of their woody hiding holes but in doing that they have to be careful to grab the truffle before the pig eats it. They are highly prized in gastronomy with the truffles from Piedmont taking the crown as the worlds best and being described by the famous 18th century French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin as the "Diamond of the kitchen".
The black truffle is found more readily around Europe, mainly in France and especially in the Perigord region. It has a less powerful flavour and these two combinations make it up to 10 times cheaper than it's white counterpart. You are unlikely to find this in major supermarkets but they can be bought online so it's worth a google search to find some.
So I say the dish is simple to make and believe me it is. All you need is enough pasta (Tagliatelli - The best quality brand you can afford or are willing to pay for) for two people, White truffle Oil, Black truffles, Butter and good Parmasan cheese, don't even bother with the pre-grated and dried stuff, it's completely pointless and only serves to make your food smell of stinky rotten feet.
Cook the pasta for as long as recommended in plenty of good salted water, then in another pan melt a good knob of butter with a drizzle of the truffle oil. While this is going on take a black truffle and either grate or chop it into small pieces, turn the heat down on the butter pan and take a third of the black truffle and throw it in there too. This might get a bit of popping action going on so probably a good idea to wear an apron!!!
Drain the pasta reserving the cooking water then put all the pasta into the other pan and give it a good toss making sure it's all coated nicely in the truffle butter. It will probably look a bit dry so at this point spoon in some of the reserved pasta water to loosen it all up a bit and at the some time this will add some nice salty seasoning.
While the pasta is still in the pan grate over plenty of Parmesan (Parmigiana Reggiano is THE only proper parmesan cheese), enough for your personal taste and again toss it all around adding more of the cooking water if you think it's necessary.
Then that's it, just serve it up with a sprinkling of cracked black pepper on the top and you have a taste sensation.
In other news it was so great to be sat up watching the rather excellent 5th Ashes test match last night, not only because it's my number one favourite sport in the world or because England are for the first time in my life far superior to the Australian side but more so because of the great effort put in by everybody involved not only there in Sydney but all over the world to promote the Jane McGrath foundation.
Jane was the wife of one of Australian crickets most famous sons Glenn McGrath. She lost her battle against breast cancer around 3 years ago. Glenn and his family set up the foundation to help those in Australia with the same condition and now it has linked up with various breast cancer charities around the world to provide money for extra nurses and to raise awareness about this condition. It's really making a big difference to people lives and the support shown at the ground was just brilliant. Virtually everybody there was wearing something pink, advertising hoarding were changed to pink, the players had pink laces in their shoes and pink bat handle grips etc etc....even the ladies stand as it's normally called at the Sydney cricket ground was renamed the "Jane McGrath Stand" which was such a nice touch.
Glenn himself said he was moved by the that everybody had got involved especially the opposition who all presented him with a signed cap and shirt which could be auctioned off to raise funds and even in the game being between South Africa and India being played in Cape Town (which I have to say is another enthralling game between the two best teams in the world) a banner was bought out before the game showing support from the whole cricketing community for this fantastic cause.
Cricket is such a good arena in which to highlight these appeals and I expect we'll see one day devoted to Leukaemia charities at Lords from our very own Sir Ian Botham and why the devil not I say.
Right I'm afraid I have to end the blog as the workmen out side the office have gone straight through the cable which links our satellite dish to our server and I've got to go and fetch the repair parts......yay at least it gets me out of this office :-)
Good day mes amis xx
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