angel hair pasta with truffle
Last Friday I was handed over a fresh truffle, brought to my desk by a colleague of mine, who loves cooking and promised to buy me one at her favorite Amsterdam grocer. The smell of the truffle is something completely unique and overpowering. Some find it disgusting, others rave about its earthy, nutty and hypnotising smell. I put it in an airtight container after coming home. Then I started leafing through my cookbooks to find the perfect recipe; not easy, since the Larousse Gastronomique told me to boil it in wine or stock, and other cookbooks just shut up about it. I did find an interesting story in the Larousse though. They said fresh eggs take on the truffle flavour when being together with a truffle, so I got up and added three fresh eggs to the box. But in the end good old Antonio Carluccio had the recipe I felt like making: pasta with fresh truffle shavings. First I made fresh dough for pasta with 1 egg to 100 grams of pasta flour. I used 300 grams of pasta flour for four people. I let the dough rest for half and hour and used my pasta machine to make the thinnest sheets of pasta, which I then ran through the spaghetti setting, getting the lightest fettucine you can imagine.
I sauteed some slices of (Smokey Al's) garlic in a knob of butter until translucent and added cream. This was not exactly in Carluccio's recipe but I felt I needed some extra sauce, especially since Carluccio must have used the white Italian truffle, which is much stronger, and I was in possession of a French black one.
So I added cream, more cream, salt and pepper and then shaved half of my 11 euros truffle in the sauce. Then I cooked the fresh fettucine for like 2 minutes and poured the sauce all over it. Then, on the plate, I added grated Parmesan and truffle shavings all over the pasta. The pasta was very creamy, very delicious with the parmesan, and with an extra delicious flavour of the truffle, although it didn't taste as strong as I thought it would. I was a little bit disappointed - should I have used more?
Surprisingly, the next day when I cooked the eggs, they had taken on the truffle flavour. It was even stronger than the truffle shavings on the pasta. Strange, no? The Larousse even said you can borrow a truffle overnight and return it the next day - after flavouring your eggs with the wonderful truffle aroma!
I sauteed some slices of (Smokey Al's) garlic in a knob of butter until translucent and added cream. This was not exactly in Carluccio's recipe but I felt I needed some extra sauce, especially since Carluccio must have used the white Italian truffle, which is much stronger, and I was in possession of a French black one.
So I added cream, more cream, salt and pepper and then shaved half of my 11 euros truffle in the sauce. Then I cooked the fresh fettucine for like 2 minutes and poured the sauce all over it. Then, on the plate, I added grated Parmesan and truffle shavings all over the pasta. The pasta was very creamy, very delicious with the parmesan, and with an extra delicious flavour of the truffle, although it didn't taste as strong as I thought it would. I was a little bit disappointed - should I have used more?
Surprisingly, the next day when I cooked the eggs, they had taken on the truffle flavour. It was even stronger than the truffle shavings on the pasta. Strange, no? The Larousse even said you can borrow a truffle overnight and return it the next day - after flavouring your eggs with the wonderful truffle aroma!
2 Comments:
what about risotto? i always hear that it goes great on top of that.
It does... but I haven't tried! I did try the truffle and fresh egg-trick though, and that worked marvelously! The truffle aroma was very distinct in the boiled eggs.
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