Eating Italy: A Chef's Culinary Adventure (27 page)

During truffle season, the Alba streets also fill up with aromas of wood smoke, grilled sausages, pungent cheeses such as Castelmagno, roasting chestnuts in iron pans, and steaming cinnamon-scented wine. Just an hour earlier, we’d gorged ourselves at Salone del Gusto, but thank God we had a lunch reservation. During festival weekends, you won’t get in anywhere without one.

We walked further into the old city, up Via Cavour, a V-shaped cobblestone street that leads to Piazza Risorgimento, the main town square. In the square, dozens more vendors sold torrone, porcini, salame, pears, and more truffles in one place than I had ever seen in my life. We finally arrived at Osteria dell’Arco through a stone archway in Piazza Savona. The glass door proudly displayed a Slow Food snail logo, a good sign.

To start, I ordered veal tartare. It came mixed with olive oil and black pepper, rock salt, and, of course, white truffles. Jeff ordered vitello tonnato and Claudia had warm bagna cauda. Our pasta course was tajarin, a Piedmont specialty hand cut into little strands slightly wider than angel hair. The pasta was yellow-orange like the morning sun, and I asked the waiter how it was made. “We use forty egg yolks per kilo of flour,” he said. No wonder. The Alba chickens feed only on insects and grass, so the yolks become bright orange—sometimes red. They toss the tajarin with nothing but pasta water, olive oil, butter, and cheese. Simple. The waiter came to the table with a scale, a few fresh white truffles, and a truffle slicer. He weighed the truffle and started slicing it over the tajarin until I said, “Stop.” I was so hungry for truffles I didn’t want him to stop at all! In Alba, the cost is about half of what it is in the United States, so we splurged and kept the truffles coming. We had roasted rabbit with polenta and truffles. Sliced roast duck with radicchio and truffles. It was a truffle orgy! We drank a bottle of La Spinetta Barbaresco, one of my favorite Piedmont wines, and watched the festival through the restaurant window. “They use dogs to hunt truffles in Italy,” Jeff told me. “In France, they use pigs. But in Italy, the pigs just eat the truffles when they find them.” I laughed and added, “That’s because Italian truffles taste better!” Nods of agreement all around.

Back out on the streets, vendors held their prize specimens to the nose of customers as they’ve been doing for decades. Watching them and thinking about all the incredible foods we’d eaten that day, I came to respect the local products of Italy more than ever. Nowhere else in the world can you experience white truffles like those in Alba. Nowhere else in the world can you experience farinata as you do in Genoa. Nowhere do you find culatello quite as rich and moist as that in the town of Zibello.

Every village in Italy, no matter how small, holds an annual food festival, or
sagra
, to celebrate these foods. Alba has held its truffle sagra every year since 1930. It’s how the community pays homage to what grows in the area and displays its local pride, whether it’s peaches in Canale, hazelnuts in Cortemilia, rabbits in Brembio, radicchio in Treviso, torrone in Cremona, gnocchi in Castel del Rio, or bilberries in Piazzatorre. It’s at the sagre that Italian food really comes to life. Turin’s slow food festival is like a mega-sagra for the whole country. So is the cheese festival held in nearby Bra on alternating years. At these food festivals, Italians share what’s good and delicious in their little corner of world.

Italy’s food festivals helped me understand that food is woven into the cultural fabric of every town, every region, and every country around the world. Sagre are not only a source of pride but also a lifeline to other communities in faraway places. Food is common ground. It’s one of the best ways to get to know someone you’ve never met or somewhere you’ve never been. As Slow Food’s founder, Carlo Petrini, wrote, “Eating someone’s food is easier and more immediate than speaking his language.”

TRUFFLES
and
EGGS

If you like scrambled eggs, then you have to try this dish. The truffles send it over the top. And the eggs themselves are the softest, creamiest, most custardy eggs you’ll ever taste. They’re mixed with fresh truffles and cooked very slowly over the lowest possible heat, while stirred constantly to keep them from scrambling. They come out soft as pudding. It’s the best open-face breakfast sandwich ever.

MAKES 2 SERVINGS

2 tablespoons (28 g) unsalted butter

4 large eggs

1 ounce (28 g) finely chopped fresh white truffles, 2 tablespoons (30 ml) white truffle paste, or 2 teaspoons (10 ml) white truffle oil

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 slices rustic bread, toasted (preferably on a wood grill)

Melt the butter in a medium nonstick pan over the lowest possible heat. Beat the eggs, truffles, and salt and pepper in a small bowl, and then pour into the pan. Cook very slowly, stirring gently and constantly with a rubber spatula until the eggs get creamy, 8 to 10 minutes. It will take a lot of patience because the eggs should not form large curds. When they are done, they should coat a spoon and look loose and creamy like custard.

Spoon the custard over the toasted bread, and if you want to go crazy, shave on some more fresh truffles.

VEAL TARTARE
with
SHAVED ARTICHOKES
and
WHITE TRUFFLE

Most veal in Italy is called
vitellone
and tastes a little different than US veal.
Vitellone
comes from calves eighteen to twenty months old and the meat is darker and more flavorful than American milk-fed veal—somewhere between US veal and beef. But any type of veal works here. They all taste great with truffles. During truffle season in Alba, you’ll find some version of this dish on every trattoria menu.

MAKES 4 SERVINGS

Truffle Vinaigrette:

¾ cup (175 ml) blended oil (
page 276
)

3 tablespoons (45 ml) freshly squeezed lemon juice

1 teaspoon (5 ml) white truffle paste, or ¼ teaspoon (1 ml) white truffle oil

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Veal Tartare and Shaved Artichokes:

8 ounces (227 g) veal shoulder

4 baby artichokes, trimmed

2 tablespoons (30 ml) freshly squeezed lemon juice

¼ cup (15 g) chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

¾ cup (175 ml) olive oil

1 small block of Parmesan cheese, for shaving

For the truffle vinaigrette:
Combine the oil, lemon juice, and truffle paste in a small blender or food processor and blend until combined (or vigorously whisk together the ingredients in a medium bowl). Season to taste with salt and pepper. Use immediately or refrigerate for up to 2 days.

For the veal tartare and shaved artichokes:
Chill four plates in the freezer. Put a small bowl and all the parts of a meat grinder in the freezer for 20 minutes. When the meat grinder is cold, grind the veal in the meat grinder, using the medium (¼-inch/6-mm) die, and catching it in the chilled bowl. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate for up to 1 hour.

Snap off and discard all of the fibrous outer leaves from the artichokes. Using a paring knife, peel the artichokes so you are left with only the tender white hearts, which will be about 1 x ½ inch (2.5 x 1.25 cm) in size. Combine the lemon juice with 2 cups (475 ml) of water in a medium bowl. Immediately drop each artichoke heart into the acidulated water to keep them from discoloring. Removing one artichoke heart at a time, thinly slice each lengthwise on a mandoline (an inexpensive handheld one works fine). As you work, put the shaved artichokes back in the acidulated water to prevent discoloration.

Drain the shaved artichokes, pat them dry, and then add the parsley and ½ cup (120 ml) of the truffle vinaigrette, stirring to combine. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Stir the olive oil into the chilled ground veal and season to taste with salt and pepper.

For each serving,
place a 4-inch (10-cm) ring mold on a cold plate and add one-quarter of the veal mixture, pressing gently to spread through the mold. If you don’t have a ring mold, create a 4-inch (10-cm) round, ¼-inch (6-mm) thick circle of veal with a table knife. Spoon one-quarter of the artichoke mixture over the top of each veal circle. Use a vegetable peeler to shave a few pieces of Parmesan from the block over the artichokes. Remove the ring mold and drizzle some truffle vinaigrette around the plate. Serve immediately.

PORCINI ZUPPA
with
BRA CHEESE FONDUTA

When porcini are in season, there are a thousand and one ways to prepare them. After cleaning and slicing pounds and pounds of them one fall, I had leftover mushroom scraps and decided to make soup. The broth is just leeks, celery, garlic, chicken stock, and herbs pureed with the cooked mushrooms. The porcini flavor is so strong, you don’t need much else. But a little Bra cheese
fonduta
with truffle pâté makes this soup even better. Porcini and truffles grow in Bra, so using the local cheese makes sense. If you can’t find Bra cheese, use any other good melting cheese, such as fontina or Taleggio. And don’t feel the need to use all fresh porcini in the soup. When I get a bumper crop of porcini, I freeze them. A mix of frozen and fresh mushrooms works fine here.